Did Coldplay blatantly steal a song by guitar shredder Joe Satriani? That question is now front-and-center, thanks to an infringement lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by Satriani. The dispute surrounds the instrumental song "If I Could Fly," elements of which are unmistakably part of "Viva la Vida," found on the same-titled Coldplay album released in June. According to Satriani, initial pleas for redress were brushed off by Coldplay, a situation that forced a more public suit.
The similarity of the melodies is quite strong, and a recent YouTube splice convincingly reveals an uncanny resemblance. Still, both songs are essentially short works, not symphonic opuses, and that raises the possibility of a mere coincidence. Indeed, relatively simple melodies and riffs have a tendency to be repeated, and Satriani might be over-litigating.
In fact, just months earlier, the mostly-unknown Creaky Boards claimed similar plagiarism, based on a track that also carried strong similarity. In that case, Coldplay was able to slough off the claim, based on the obscurity of the work. "We are being sued by about twelve people who say that we stole it, though I promise we didn't," Chris Martin recently stated during a Yahoo Live Sets interview.
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