Coldplay got a bit of flack in 2008 because their song Viva La Vida from the same year sounded a lot like If I Could Fly by Joe Satriani from 2004. Satriani sued, but dropped the charges when Coldplay and Satriani decided to settle out of court. Part of the deal was that they wouldn’t talk about it any more. Personally, I think they may have heard the song and got inspired by it subconsciously. Either that or it’s poor coincidence.

Still, Coldplay has got a track record of borrowing tunes. And some times it makes sense. The opening of Life In Technicolor from 2008 sounds a lot like the Jon Hopkins track Light Through the Veins, also from 2008. But there’s a really good reason for that. Jon Hopkins was one of the producers of the Coldplay track and he let them borrow it.

A different case however is the song Talk from 2005. It became a massive hit, but what a lot of people don’t know is that the main theme is borrowed directly from a motif from Kraftwerk’s 1981 track Computer Love. But in all honesty, Chris Martin did try his best to write German to ask Kraftwerk if they could use it (they said yes).

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