“Easier Said than Done” by Shakatak, Tuesday, July 30, 2024

 

Shakatak formed in 1980 in London. The jazz-funk has consisted of several changing members in their over forty-year career, but three of the key members—Jill Saward, Bill Sharpe, and Roger Odel—have remained in the band throughout its run, and bassist George Anderson joined the band in their first year. After a few minor hits in 1980, the band scored their first major hit in the U.K., “Easier Said than Done,” which featured the band singing in unison with an easy instrumental line. The single also helped the group achieve international success in Australia and Europe. Subsequent releases would bring the band success in Japan and the United States as well. 

YOU CAN TAKE YOUR LOVE AWAY. “Easier Said than Done” is a very simple song with a repeating verse throughout the song. After each verse there is an instrumental break featuring a funky bass and piano improvisation. It’s a song that I could imagine being played at a grocery store back when I was young and grocery stores played elevator Muzak. This is not to disparage the English jazz band. The jazz improvisations are more interesting than generic grocery store music of the late 20th century, but lyrically, the song feels like it was just a way to make jazz relevant again in the ‘80s. I’m sure that if I heard this song in a hotel lobby while I was sipping an Old Fashioned, I’d be looking at the players’ virtuosity rather than listening to the singer’s vocal delivery. Today’s song is a perfect mid-summer vacation tune that keeps the summer fresh, but it also makes me think about the gradual decline of jazz in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when my generation grew up automatically thinking about Muzak and not music. 

I CAN’T SHOUT OUT WHEN YOU WON. I didn’t know today’s song until Sunday when I learned about the lawsuit Shakatak filed against K-pop group NewJeans. The English jazz group claims that the K-pop group plagiarized the melody on “Bubble Gum” from their song “Easier Said than Done.” Listening to the songs back to back, the beginning of the chorus of “Bubble Gum” sounds like it follows the same note pattern of the vocal line of “Easier Said than Done.” I’m not sure if it constitutes a plagiarism lawsuit, especially with as much music that seems to be ripped off these days. Many artists credit samples like Gotye with “Somebody That I Used to Know,” Foster the People with “Pumped Up Kicks,” and The Weeknd with “Out of Time.” It seems impossible that a melody actually comes from thin air and it is impossible for me to give proper attribution to a melody that has been in your head since you were a child before we all had Shazam installed on our phones. Will Shakatak’s members get songwriting credit on the song like Hayley Williams and Josh Farro did on Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u”? The melody of “Bubble Gum” sounds more similar to “Easier Said than Done” than “good 4 u” sounds to “Misery Business.” When a song samples another, there is clear intent of use; however, when a melody is subconscious and therefore harder to credit in many cases. Shakatak has sent “Bubble Gum” to musical experts for analysis. But I think that when disputes like this come up, if the songwriters of the accused song do not automatically offer songwriting credit or admit to the musical influence, there should be a musical questioning process in which all of the songwriters of the song accused of plagiarism are subpoenaed to musical court, questioned about their influences and all of their interviews should be used as evidence as well. Perhaps also their streaming records should be subpoenaed to see if the writers were even aware of the song. Of course, influence and listening to a song doesn’t guarantee that they didn’t hear the song in, say a grocery store. And if they heard the song subconsciously, I think that it’s very hard to prove that there was intent of plagiarism. I’m definitely not a legal expert, but I think that it’s possible that the writers of NewJeans’ “Bubble Gum” could have stumbled on the melody coincidentally and they shouldn’t be held at fault if that happened because note and chord combinations can happen accidentally with two groups never knowing that the other exists. 

Read the lyrics on Genius.