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Legal
Coldplay accused of more song theft
By CMU Editorial | Published on Friday 15 January 2010
I usually go out of my way to avoid listening to Coldplay songs, but I think I’m going to have to go through their back catalogue and check if I wrote any of them. It seems everyone else has. Or at least claims they have.
The latest claim comes from unknown songwriter Sammie Lee Smith, who filed court papers at Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday claiming that he was responsible for writing three of the band’s songs, ‘Yellow, ‘Clocks’ and ‘Trouble’. The somewhat optimistic lawsuit demands that the band stop playing the songs and pay him unspecified damages.
Of course this follows the case launched by Joe Satriani in 2008. The guitarist claimed that the band had used portions of his song ‘If I Could Fly’ for their song ‘Viva La Vida’. The band denied any wrongdoing but settled out of court last year.
Cat Stevens also noted similarities between the same Coldplay song and parts of his track ‘Foreigner Suite’ last year. However, he said they’d probably done it by accident and decided not to get all legal on their buttocks.
