Marvin Gaye’s kids, estate seek ‘Blurred Lines’ sales freeze, pen open letter

Marvin Gaye’s children don’t just want a piece of “Blurred Lines.” Now, they want to bury it.

On Tuesday night, lawyers representing the children and the estate of Marvin Gaye filed an injunction to halt all sales, streaming and performances of the Robin Thicke and Pharrell-penned hit single. On March 10 in Los Angeles, a jury awarded the Gaye family $7.3 million after determining Thicke’s single was a copyright infringement of Gaye’s single “Got to Give It Up.”

“We’ll be asking the court to enter an injunction prohibiting the further sale and distribution of ‘Blurred Lines’ unless and until we can reach an agreement with those guys on the other side about how future monies that are received will be shared,” Gaye family attorney Richard Busch told Rolling Stone. If a judge agrees, it could put the Gayes in a position to ask for royalties from the song’s future sales and profits from performances, in the vein of the Sam Smith/Tom Petty agreement from earlier this year.

The injunction sought by the Gayes also seeks to add the rapper T.I. (who added a verse to the song) and the record labels Universal, Interscope and Star Trak to the verdict, though each was originally deemed not responsible for infringement in the decision.

Now Nona Gaye, Frankie Gaye and Marvin Gaye III have also written a coinciding open letter that explains both their reasoning behind the suit and why they feel that defending their father’s legacy requires stamping out “Blurred Lines” for the time being.

“It is our wish that our dad’s legacy, and all great music, past, present, and future, be enjoyed and protected, with the knowledge that adhering to copyright standards assures our musical treasures will always be valued,” they wrote.

“If Mr. Thicke and Mr. Williams had tried to create a new song and coincidentally infused ‘Got to Give It Up’ into their work, instead of deliberately undertaking to ‘write a song with the same groove,’ we would probably be having a different conversation.

“Like most artists, they could have licensed and secured the song for appropriate usage; a simple procedure usually arranged in advance of the song’s release. This did not happen. We would have welcomed a conversation with them before the release of their work. This also did not happen.”

They allowed for one small mercy, though: The family denied preparing a case against Pharrell’s solo mega-hit “Happy” on grounds that it sounded a bit like Gaye’s “Ain’t That Peculiar.”

“[W]e want to put to rest any rumors that we are contemplating claims against Pharrell Williams for his song, ‘Happy.’ This is 100% false. We have absolutely no claim whatsoever concerning ‘Happy.’”

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