Yeah I could totally hear it from the first couple listens - the fact that the jury made the award without even listening to the recordings, just the sheet musi

Yeah I could totally hear it from the first couple listens - the fact that the jury made the award without even listening to the recordings, just the sheet music being played should put a big exlamation mark on the validity. Apparently, on the stand, Pharrell even admitted that the bassline is fundamentally the same. He routinely said it took him "about an hour" to put the song together, and personally, I find that says a lot about the genesis of the song. It's one thing to use customary verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-verse and put it in, say, the key of D, but some of the best wizards in the business still have to put a bit of elbow grease in to make a hit. "Blurred Lines" sounded like a kareoke version to me, straight up. I think the Sam Smith thing was a lot less clear cut than this one, but after hearing the tweaked sound comparison, I can understand why everybody just wanted it to get solved and go away.