Re -Train Your Brain To Happiness

March 10, 2015

Robin Thicke And Pharell Williams Lose The ‘Blurred Lines’ - Marvyn Gaye Lawsuit - Now New Rules For Music - Updated

I guess this was inevitable.It has happened before and it seems it will happen again.

A JURY has awarded Marvin Gaye’s children nearly $7.4 million after determining singers Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams copied their father’s music to create Blurred Lines, the biggest hit song of 2013.

Williams quickly released a statement to Rolling Stone.

“While we respect the judicial process, we are extremely disappointed in the ruling made today, which sets a horrible precedent for music and creativity going forward,” a spokesperson for Pharrell said. “Pharrell created Blurred Lines from his heart, mind and soul and the song was not taken from anyone or anywhere else. We are reviewing the decision, considering our options and you will hear more from us soon about this matter.”
Marvin Gaye’s daughter Nona Gaye wept as the verdict was being read and was hugged by her attorney, Richard Busch.

“Right now, I feel free,” Nona Gaye said after the verdict.

“Free from ... Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke’s chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told.”

Last week it was revealed that the song made total profits made of US$16.67 million (A$21.3 million, with US $5.65 million of the profits going to Thicke, US$5.51 million to Pharell and US$705,000 to T.I who also appeared in the video.

The verdict means more than half of the pair’s profits will go to Gaye’s estate.

The verdict could tarnish the legacy of Williams, a reliable hit-maker who has won Grammy Awards and appears on NBC’s music competition show “The Voice.”

An attorney for Thicke and Williams has said a decision in favour of Gaye’s heirs could have a chilling effect on musicians who try to emulate an era or another artist’s sound.

The Gayes’ lawyer branded Williams and Thicke liars who went beyond trying to emulate the sound of Gaye’s late-1970s music and copied the R & B legend’s hit Got to Give It Up outright.

“They fought this fight despite every odd being against them,” Busch said of the Gaye family outside court.

Thicke told jurors he didn’t write Blurred Lines, which Williams testified he crafted in about an hour in mid-2012.

Williams told jurors that Gaye’s music was part of the soundtrack of his youth. But the seven-time Grammy winner said he didn’t use any of it to create Blurred Lines.

Gaye’s children — Nona, Frankie and Marvin Gaye III — sued the singers in 2013 and were present when the verdict was read.
The verdict may face years of appeals.

“Blurred Lines” has sold more than 7.3 million copies in the U.S. alone, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures. It earned a Grammy Awards nomination and netted Williams and Thicke millions of dollars.

The case was a struggle between two of music’s biggest names: Williams has sold more than 100 million records worldwide during his career as a singer-producer, and Gaye performed hits such as Sexual Healing and How Sweet It Is (To be Loved by You) remain popular.

During closing arguments, Busch accused Thicke and Williams of lying about how the song was created. He told jurors they could award Gaye’s children millions of dollars if they determined the copyright to Got to Give It Up was infringed.

Howard King, lead attorney for Williams and Thicke, told the panel that a verdict in favour of the Gaye family would have a chilling effect on musicians who were trying to recreate a genre or homage to another artist’s sound.

King denied there were any substantial similarities between Blurred Lines and the sheet music Gaye submitted to obtain copyright protection.

Williams has become a household name — known simply as Pharrell — thanks to his hit song Happy and his work as a judge on the The Voice. He wrote the majority of Blurred Lines and recorded it in one night with Thicke. A segment by rapper T.I. was added later.

Williams, 41, also signed a document stating he didn’t use any other artists’ work in the music and would be responsible if a successful copyright claim was raised.

Thicke testified he wasn’t present when the song was written, despite receiving credit.
The trial focused on detailed analyses of chords and notes in both Blurred Lines and Got to Give It Up.

Jurors repeatedly heard the upbeat song Blurred Lines and saw snippets of its music video, but Gaye’s music was represented during the trial in a less polished form. Jurors did not hear Got to Give It Up as Gaye recorded it, but rather a version created based solely on sheet music submitted to gain copyright protection.

That version lacked many of the elements — including Gaye’s voice — that helped make the song a hit in 1977. Busch derisively called the version used in court a “Frankenstein-like monster” that didn’t accurately represent Gaye’s work.

An expert for the Gaye family said there were eight distinct elements from “Got to Give It Up” that were used in “Blurred Lines,” but an expert for Williams and Thicke denied those similarities existed.

Gaye, pictured above, died in April 1984, leaving his children the copyrights to his music.

With thanks to News. Com

GOT TO GIVE IT UP - MARVIN GAYE

A Boxed Set of Marvin Gaye's work will be released soon according to Noise 11:

Like George Harrison, Chuck Berry and others re-mastered box sets seem to be the way to go.

The first of three LP box sets collecting the albums of Marvin Gaye is expected to be released on April 20 in the U.K. and April 21 in the U.S.

Music Tap reports that the first set will cover Gaye’s recording career from 1961 to 1965 and will, most likely, contain the following albums:

The Soulful Moods of Marvin Gaye (1961)
That Stubborn Kind of Falla (1963)
When I’m Alone I Cry (1964)
Hello Broadway (1964)
Together (1964)
How Sweet It Is to Be Loved By You (1965)
A Tribute to the Great Nat “King” Cole (1965)

Only How Sweet It Is charted nationally, reaching number 128 on the Albums and 4 on the R&B Albums charts; however, the albums did include a number of top twenty hits:
Stubborn Kind of Fella (1962 / #46 Pop / #8 R&B) – From That Stubborn Kind of Falla
Hitch Hike (1962 / #30 Pop / #12 R&B) – From That Stubborn Kind of Falla
Pride and Joy (1963 / #10 Pop / #2 R&B) – From That Stubborn Kind of Falla
Once Upon a Time (with Mary Wells) (1964 / #19 Pop / #3 R&B) – from Together
What’s the Matter With You Baby (with Mary Wells) (1964 / #17 Pop / #2 R&B) – from Together
Try It Baby (1964 / #15 Pop / #6 R&B) – from How Sweet It Is to Be Loved By You
How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) (1964 / #6 Pop / #3 R&B) – from How Sweet It Is to Be Loved By You

Harry Weinger has overseen the set which sees the first three albums released in stereo on vinyl for the first time.

Update:

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A verdict saying Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke copied Marvin Gaye's music to create their hit song "Blurred Lines" could ripple across the music industry, potentially changing how artists work and opening the door to new copyright claims.

An eight-person jury determined Tuesday that Williams and Thicke copied elements of Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up" and ordered the pair to pay nearly $7.4 million to the late R&B legend's three children.

Millions more in potential future profits for "Blurred Lines" are now also at stake.

The Gaye family will seek an injunction against the song, which will give them leverage to negotiate for royalties and other concessions such as songwriting credit, although Tuesday's verdict could face years of appeals.

While the verdict affects Thicke and Williams' finances in the short term, artists and music industry lawyers will likely face new constraints as they sort through the verdict and its implications.

Howard King, lead attorney for Thicke and Williams, said in closing arguments that a verdict for the Gaye family would have a chilling effect on musicians trying to evoke an era or create an homage to the sound of earlier artists. Williams contended during the trial that he was only trying to mimic the "feel" of Gaye's late 1970s music but insisted he did not use elements of his idol's work.

"Today's successful verdict, with the odds more than stacked against the Marvin Gaye estate, could redefine what copyright infringement means for recording artists," said Glen Rothstein, an intellectual property attorney.

He said the decision sets a precedent because "paying homage to musical influences was an acceptable, and indeed commonplace way of conducting business and even showing respect for one's musical idols, (but) after today, doubt has been cast on where the line will be drawn for copyright infringement purposes."

Music copyright trials are rare, but allegations that a song copies another artist's work are common. Singers Sam Smith and Tom Petty recently reached an agreement that conferred songwriting credit to Petty on Smith's song, "Stay With Me," which resembled Petty's hit "I Won't Back Down."

In the "Blurred Lines" case, the Gaye family will seek an injunction against the song, giving them leverage to negotiate for royalties and other concessions such as songwriting credits.

Nona Gaye, the late singer's daughter, wept as the verdict was read and later told reporters: "Right now, I feel free. Free from ... Pharrell Williams' and Robin Thicke's chains and what they tried to keep on us and the lies that were told."

Larry Iser, an intellectual property lawyer who has represented numerous musicians such as Jackson Browne and David Byrne in music copyright cases, criticized the verdict.

"Although Gaye was the Prince of Soul, he didn't own a copyright to the genre, and Thicke and Williams' homage to the feel of Marvin Gaye is not infringing," Iser said.

King, the pair's lawyer, said record labels are going to become more reluctant to release music that's similar to other works — an assertion disputed by Richard Busch, the lead attorney for the Gaye family.

"While Mr. Williams' lawyer suggested in his closing argument that the world would come to an end, and music would cease to exist if they were found liable, I still see the sun shining," Busch said. "The music industry will go on."

So, too, will Williams' career, said Joe Levy, editor-at-large at Billboard.

"For Pharrell, the story moves on," he said. "It will move on quickly."

Williams, 41, is a seven-time Grammy Award winner whose songs he's performed or produced have sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. His hit "Happy" has helped make him a household name, as has his work as a judge on NBC's music competition show, "The Voice."

"It's much to Pharrell's advantage that he is at a high point in his career," Levy said.

Thicke's career may have more issues as a result of Tuesday's verdict — which came on his 38th birthday — because "Blurred Lines" was a global hit and his follow-up effort failed to connect with audiences, Levy said. Despite the song's popularity, feminists have criticized it, saying it promotes rape culture.

While the verdict will likely make musicians and record labels more cautious, it won't stop artists from using others' works as inspiration, Levy said.

Despite the decision, he predicted that "Blurred Lines" will continue to make plenty of money for Williams, Thicke and, in all likelihood, the Gaye family.

"People aren't going to stop playing it," Levy said. "It's not just going to disappear."

By Anthony McCartney who can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

With thanks to My Way

Another update from Noise 11 By Paul Cashmere:

Stevie Wonder Says Blurred Lines Is Nothing Like Got To Give It Up

Stevie Wonder has commented on the ‘Blurred Lines’ vs ‘Got To Give It Up’ court case. The music legend says the court made the wrong decision.

“I don’t think it’s a steal from Marvin Gaye,” Wonder told TMZ. “I’ve been through lawsuits for songs and all that. I think that the groove is very similar but you have to remember he is a big fan of Marvin Gaye’s so that’s okay. But the song is not like Marvin Gaye’s. It is not the same”.

Earlier this week Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were ordered to pay the family of Marvin Gaye $7.4 million for ripping of Gaye’s 70s soul classic ‘Got To Give It Up’ with their 2014 hit ‘Blurred Lines’.

Wonder doesn’t think the ruling was the end and that next time it could go ugly for the Gaye family. “If the family should hear this, don’t let your lawyer get you into losing money on some of the crap out there,” he said.

Williams and Thicke will now seek an appeal.

Howard King, acting for Williams and Thicke, said in a statement, “We owe it to song writers around the world to make sure this verdict doesn’t stand,” King said. “My clients know that they wrote the song ‘Blurred Lines’ from their hearts and souls and no other source.”

The Gaye family is currently investigating the similarity between Pharrell Williams’ ‘Happy’ and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Ain’t That Peculiar’.

“Pharrell has readily admitted that Marvin Gaye is one of his idols, but it’s silk and rayon,” King said in his statement. “If this is the way the law is going to go, then the creator of rayon better look behind him for lawsuits from the owners of silk, because, even though they feel the same they are structurally, completely different just like these songs.”

The Gaye vs Thicke case has set an interesting precedent for songwriters. Similarities between Iggy Pop’s ‘Lust For Life’ (written by David Bowie) and Jet ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ could develop into legal arguments. Derivative band Airbourne and Wolfmother could face legal action from AC/DC or Black Sabbath. AC/DC could face legal action from Chuck Berry. The list goes one.

The most high-profile plagiarism case was The Chiffons vs George Harrison over ‘My Sweet Lord’. That end was result was that George lost the case but the ending had a twist, he ended up owning the song he “stole”.

Here is an except from my 1993 interview with George Harrison explaining the case:

Paul Cashmere: How do you feel about “My Sweet Lord” these days. How did the court case surrounding that song effect your songwriting?

George Harrison: It didn’t really affect my songwriting. I did record “This Song,” which was kind of a comment about the situation. The thing that really disappoints me is when you have a relationship with one person and they turn out to betray you. Because the whole story of “My Sweet Lord” is based upon this fellow, Allan Klein, who managed the Beatles from about 1968 or ’69, through until 1973. When they issued a complaint about “My Sweet Lord”, he was my business manager.

He was the one who put out “My Sweet Lord” and collected 20 percent commission on the record. And he was the one who got the lawyers to defend me, and did an interview in Playboy where he talked about how the song was nothing like the other song. Later, when the judge in court told me to settle with them, because he didn’t think I’d consciously stolen their song, they were doing a settlement deal with me when they suddenly stopped the settlement. Some time elapsed, and I found out that this guy Klein had gone around the back door. In the meantime, we’d fired him.

He went round the back door and bought the rights to the one song, “He’s So Fine,” in order to continue a law suit against me. He, on one hand, was defending me, then he switched sides and continued the law suit. And every time the judge said what the result was, he’d appeal. And he kept appealing and appealing until it got to the Supreme Court.

I mean this thing went on for 16 years or something … 18 years. And finally, it’s all over with, and the result of it is I own “My Sweet Lord,” and I now own “He’s So Fine,” and Allan Klein owes me like three or four hundred thousand dollars ’cause he took all the money on both songs. It’s really a joke. It’s a total joke.

Paul Cashmere: There’s a movie plot in there somewhere.

George Harrison: There’s definitely a book, because, now with any kind of law pertaining to infringement of copyright, they always quote this case. It’s become the precedent in all these law students’ books.

Latest update July 17th,2015 from Noise 11:

A U.S District Judge has just handed down a decision that upholds the verdict given to the family of Marvin Gaye over the copying of Got to Give It Up in the Robin Thicke smash Blurred Lines.

The Gaye family won the original trial back in March, where it was found that Thicke and Pharrell Williams did not willfully and plan copyright infringement but did, in fact, copy major portions of the Gaye record, and were awarded $7.4 million. The verdict was appealed but, in the long run, it may have hurt more people and companies.

Along with denying a new trial, U.S. District Judge John Kronstadt also agreed with the Gaye family on their request to add T.I., who also appeared on the record, and the record companies UMG, Interscope and Star Trak Entertainment to the judgement.

Gaye’s family did, however, lose the bid to have the song removed from all distribution. They were, instead, awarded 50% of all songwriting and publishing royalties. The judgement was also reduced from $7.4 million to $5.3 million.

Thicke and Pharrell still plan on appealing the original ruling.

Some related posts:

Tom Petty Calls Sam Smith Song "A Musical Accident"

Did Led Zeppelin Steal The ‘Stairway to Heaven’ Riff?

George Harrison's Apple Years Box Set To Be Released

Chuck Berry: Complete Recordings To Be Released As 16CD Set

The Rolling Stones To Release Two Heritage Concerts On DVD & Their Australian "On Fire" Tour

March 09, 2015

Apple CEO Tim Cook Unveils Apple Watch In California

APPLE is supercharging its watch by announcing new apps that widen the device’s appeal while talking up its fashion alure.

At an event at the Yerba Buena Centre in San Francisco, Apple chief executive Tim Cook said Apple Watch was “the most personal device Apple had ever created”.

Beginning on April 10, Apple Watch will be available for preview, try-on by appointment at Apple’s retail stores, and pre-order through the Apple Online Store locally.

But because of the declining dollar, you will pay handsomely for Apple Watch in Australia.
Apple Watch is available in three collections in Australia, Apple Watch Sport will cost from $499 to $579 while Apple Watch will sell from$799 to $1,629.

Apple Watch Edition, crafted from custom rose or yellow 18-karat gold alloys, will sell with a recommended retail price starting from $14,000.

Is it worth it? Here’s what you can expect from Apple Watch:

Operating system and battery
An updated version of Apple’s mobile operating system, iOS8.2, would include a new Apple Watch app that would give access to all the apps that could be loaded onto the watch. It would be available for download from today.

Mr Cook said Apple Watch had “all day” battery life and in a typical day users could expect 18 hours of battery life but there wasn’t anything more specific than that.

Premium design
Mr Cook spoke of the material used in the construction of the three watch varieties, a standard watch, sports watch and premium design, including “jaw dropping” 18-carat gold.
He said Apple Watch was an incredibly accurate time piece, and a way to measure fitness and health. He said users could configure the various clock faces by adding their choice of visual alerts using Glances — the watch’s notification system.

Users were alerted to messages by a tactic vibration on your arm. They could respond from the watch and take calls from it also. It also handed emails.
He said pressing the side button brings up friends and users could connect Apple Watch to Apple Watch so that a sketch you were drawing on your watch would simultaneously appear on your friend’s device. You could tap your watch to alert a friend or send your heart beat to them in the same manner.

Health and fitness
He said Apple Watch was a comprehensive health and fitness monitor and would track movements, exercises and remind you if you were sitting too long.
On a Monday, the watch would send you a report on how you performed the previous week along with suggestions on improving performance in the coming week.
“It’s like having a coach on your watch,” he said.
A second, workout app would show detailed exercise data including how many calories you were burning, distance and time spent.
The watch would also remind you to stand while you were at work and deemed too sedentary.

Notifications and apps
He said any notification you received on your phone could be displayed on the watch, including social media alerts.

He said developers already had created thousands of apps for Apple Watch.
Demonstrated examples included stock market information appearing on the watch, Sales Force data, top tweets, and upcoming flights you were booked on courtesy of the American Airlines app.
Pressing the watch’s crown brought up Apple’s personal assistant Siri. You could also say “Hey Siri”. Using voice control, users could reply to alerts. Apple showed a Weechat app. You could reply by tapping on the watch and selecting from a group of predefined reply stickers.

Apple Pay
When using Apple Pay, double tapping the watch’s side button brought up your credit cards and you make a payment by putting your watch next to a retail outlet’s scanner.
The watch also kept you in touch with your phone when it was in another room.
You could swipe the watch face to quickly see a group of photos using Instagram and scan through them using the watch’s crown.

He demonstrated calling a chauffeur/taxi on the new Apple Watch Uber app. At an airport, the watch would show flight ticket details and a bar code on it would help you get through airport security. A similar function would let a user pass through a lobby security and them use the watch as a room key.

Alarm.com’s app would let a user unlock a garage door with their watch. The app shows a live feed of the door opening.

Today’s event in California also saw Apple unveil updates to their current products.
In a surprise move, Apple announced a new style of Notebook — a tiny MacBook that weighs just over 900 grams and 13.1mm thick.

Apple’s Phil Schiller introduced the product. He said it was 24 per cent thinner than MacBook Air. It has an all-metal enclosure. Despite its small size it has a full-sized keyboard. A ‘butterfly mechanism’ makes it much easier to strike keys accurately. Backlighting was provided with individual LED lights for each key.
The notebook had a 12-inch Retina display with 2304x1400 pixels, just over 3.3 million pixels.

It had a new trackpad with 4 sensors that distinguished between lighter clicks and stronger, force clicks. Force clicks offer context-dependent actions, such as adding a calendar entry when you get an email invitation to an event. Deep pressing while watching a movie would cause it to fast forward.

Apple had developed a new “terraced” battery structure for all day battery life and new USB C technology allowed.

It had a 1.1 Gigaahertz dual core Intel Core M processor, 8 GB of memory and 256GB of solid state storage for $US1299. It will ship from April 10 to selected countries and would come in
silver, “space grey” and gold.

The MacBook Air was being updated with a faster processor and the MacBook pro would get a faster processor, twice as fast flash memory, and an extra hour of battery life — now 10 hours.

On other matters, Mr Cook said Apple had opened 6 stores in China in the past 6 weeks and now had 453 stores with 120 million customers globally.

He said Apple TV was adding more providers and highlighted HBO and its star program Game of Thrones. The CEO of HBO Richard Plepler said HBO wold introduce a stand-alone streaming service and Apple would be its exclusive partner at launch, with access to all its past, present and future programming.

Apple had sold over 25 million Apple TV units at $US99 — the price now would be $US69. Australian pricing is yet to be confirmed.

He said iPhone was now the top selling phone in the world with 99 per cent customer satisfaction.

He said Apple had more than 2,500 banks supporting Apple Pay and in the first three months had tripled the number of locations throughout the US to 700,000. There was no news yet on its availability in other countries such as Australia.

They included 40,000 Coca Cola vending machines in the US which soon would be expanded to 100,000.

He said every major car brand was committed to CarPlay and 40 new car models would ship with it by the end of the year.

He said there were more than 900 apps that supported Apple’s HealthKit.

By Chris Griffith
With thanks to The Australian

And more information here from the Australian:

TODAY’S Apple event didn’t offer much new information about Apple Watch, technically speaking. Apple CEO Tim Cook reiterated many of the features that were evident either during the Watch’s preview in September last year or since.

What we learnt was availability and price. Australia as usual will be among the first countries to receive the watch. People will be able to view it and try it on by appointment in Apple stores in Australia from April 10. It will launch in nine countries including Australia on April 24.

Prices here for the three editions will start from $499 for Apple Watch Sport, $799 for Apple Watch and from $14,000 for the 18-carat gold Apple Watch Edition.

The pricey nature of Apple Watch and the declining dollar means you’ll be paying significant money for Apple Watch here, more than for the Android smartwatch opposition, and more than for many smartphones.
But as often occurs in life, you get what you pay for and Apple has gone to lengths to work with developers to offer a quality integrated experience.
I must say I was disappointed that today’s keynote didn’t include more granular information about more of the big names implementing apps on the watch. Big name engagement arguabley is where Apple Watch will stand out. eBay, Disney, Sales Force, Bank of America, BMW, Honeywell, Starwood Hotels and Lutron are believed to be among them.

We did get a recap on how you could securely walk through a hotel lobby and use your watch to unlock your room door or make your way through an airport using the American Airlines watch app.

It has intrigued me how Apple would define what a smartwatch does. Today indicates the raison d’etre for an Apple Watch is about the same as for an Android one, but Apple is offering a more cultivated version of it.

Notifications (‘glances’), activity and fitness monitoring, payments, playing mobile music on the watch, vibration alerts, apps that control locks, garage doors and air conditioners or offer security access to hotel rooms, seem the go.

I’m yet to be convinced that Siri, voice commands and taking calls on your watch will be widely embraced. I don’t know many people who use Siri or any of the main personal assistant apps on a phone, let alone a watch. And there’s plenty of tasks better performed on a phone rather than a watch. To replicate everything on a smartwatch I think is a big mistake.

There’s still many unanswered questions. Will Apple’s claim of all-day battery life stack up? Is its optical heart rate monitor accurate enough to interest those into serious training? We’ll know soon enough when the reviews are in. And we don’t have new information about any intended rollout of Apple Pay in Australia.

So where does this leave Android Wear watches? In the beauty stakes, Android and other watches should hold their own against Apple Watch. Recent Android watches such as the Moto 360, LG’s G watch R and the new Huawei Watch are beautiful round faced wristwatches with smart functionality built in.

The fact some traditional Swiss watchmakers are starting to make smartwatches along with quality brands such as Guess means Apple’s square watches have stiff competition in looks.
When it comes to software, the picture is different. While the likes of Samsung, LG and Sony make quality watch hardware, they are being dragged down by Android Wear. Its convoluted watch menu system, and the overabundance of Google Now cards are two issues.
The experience on Android Wear has been poor enough for third-party Android smartwatch launchers to appear to improve the user experience. And it’s interesting to see Samsung and LG experimenting with other operating system such as Tizen and WebOS on their watches — Android Wear love is not universal.

Thankfully, there will be some improvement in Android Wear shortly as Google’s Lollipop is rolled out. It’s certainly viable despite poor Android watch sales to date. Hopefully Apple Watch will push Android to provide a much better user experience. Everyone will benefit from the competition.

So who will buy Apple Watch? A survey we published today by Pureprofile says about 4.2 per cent of adults in Australia intend to buy it as early adopters. Another 18.9 per cent may do so when it’s better known. The survey also found there were people who would buy Apple Watch without understanding what it does. Also, around a quarter of the population hadn’t heard about Appler Watch.

So the jury is out on its success. It will be fascinating to see how Apple Watch goes.

The Sound of Music at 50: Still Our Favourite thing?

Never mind Neil Patrick Harris’s underpants or Patricia Arquette’s politics; the show-stopping moment at this year’s Academy Awards came when Lady Gaga sang a medley to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The Sound of Music. Who would have predicted it? There on the stage was the avant-garde electropop star who once wore a dress made of raw meat swishing around in a white ball gown, belting out My Favourite Things in a cut-glass English accent.

It was a testament to Gaga’s ability to reinvent herself. But The Sound of Music is just as adept at moving with the times. The events that inspired the film took place in Austria in the 1920s and 1930s. Maria von Trapp’s memoir of those events was published in 1949, and was turned into a stage musical by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II 10 years later. Then came the film. It premiered in 1965, just a few months before The Beatles’ second film, Help! But although we think of The Beatles as dominating the Swinging ‘60s, it was The Sound of Music that was the Oscar-winning smash – and its soundtrack album was the UK’s best-selling LP, not just in 1965, but in 1966 and 1968.

The film’s march through the decades doesn’t stop there. In the 1970s and beyond, it was a holiday television staple. In the 1990s, it became the focus of Rocky Horror-style fancy-dress singalong nights. In critics’ polls, Singin’ in The Rain may be held up as the finest of all Hollywood musicals. But the most popular is indisputably The Sound of Music.

In an effort to understand the film’s eternal appeal, I thought I should rewatch it on DVD.

But then a question struck me: had I ever actually watched it in the first place? I knew I’d seen excerpts from it on clip shows over the years, and I had hazy memories of catching some of it on television on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but I wasn’t sure that I’d ever watched it from start to finish. And I suspect I’m not the only person in that position. We’ve all seen so many snippets and parodies that The Sound of Music is a part of our lives whether we’ve watched it or not. We can hum along to the title song, not to mention Do-Re-Mi and Climb Ev’ry Mountain. We can picture its heroine radiating wholesomeness as she gambols through the Alps, arms outstretched, apron swirling.

Most of us can have a stab at summarising the plot, too. A hearty trainee nun called Maria (Julie Andrews) is hired to look after the seven von Trapp children in a Salzburg schloss. She goes on to thaw the heart of the children’s widowed father (Christopher Plummer). But what else happens? Apart from the few scenes and the many songs that are burnt into our brains, what exactly does The Sound of Music entail?

The short answer is: not a lot. What surprised me when I finally watched the film last month was that if you’ve seen bits and pieces of it, then you’ve pretty much seen the whole thing. True, the von Trapps have to flee from the Nazis in the last half-hour – a sequence which is almost entirely separate from everything beforehand – but otherwise, there’s not much that happens.

Going for a song
It’s certainly not a film to watch for its narrative twists and turns. How does Maria win over the hostile von Trapp children? With one rendition of My Favourite Things. What convinces Captain von Trapp that she is a positive influence on his offspring? A performance of The Lonely Goatherd. And what convinces the audience that the captain has been influenced by Maria? A recital of Edelweiss. Compared to the elaborate musicals that made Andrews a star of stage (My Fair Lady) and screen (Mary Poppins), The Sound of Music is more of a concert than a film – a series of catchy Rodgers and Hammerstein numbers linked by some crisp repartee. But that isn’t a criticism. The fact that The Sound of Music resembles a greatest hits album could be the key to its record-breaking success.

“In many ways, The Sound of Music follows the classic musical structure that highlights its musical numbers over plot,” says Professor Caryl Flinn of the University Of Michigan, author of a new British Film Institute guide to The Sound of Music. “Cinema scholars in fact have grouped musicals along with porno and horror films for that reason – storylines aren’t generally what draw people in to watch these genres. In porno and horror, it’s all about getting to the next sex scene and the next scare; and in musicals, it’s all about getting to the next song. With The Sound of Music, songs are the real anchor for audiences’ feelings.”

It’s the film’s concentration on its peerless songs which accounts for the Sing-a-long Sound of Music phenomenon. In 1999, London’s Prince Charles Cinema started screening it every Friday evening, and encouraged audiences to dress up as the characters. The format has since been exported to cinemas all around the globe. The song-based structure also helps to explain why the film is a television fixture. From a TV station’s point of view, the songs make The Sound of Music easy to chop up into advertising-friendly chunks. From the viewer’s perspective, you can switch it on halfway through, and you won’t have any difficulty picking up the story.

‘Restraint and reserve’
And it isn’t just the plot that has been stripped back to basics. The film’s director and screenwriter, Robert Wise and Ernest Lehman, made West Side Story in 1961, but while that musical bursts with heightened colours and balletic dance routines, The Sound of Music has almost no choreography beyond some decorous waltzing, and no visual flair beyond the scenic shots of sunny Salzburg. “There is so much restraint and reserve in The Sound of Music,” says Professor Flinn. “I think it reflects the production team’s desire to go for simplicity and sincerity, and not risk courting anything too over-the-top or kitschy.”

Given that Plummer has spent decades decrying the film’s sickly sweetness, it might seem strange to hear it described in terms of simplicity and restraint, but Professor Flinn could be on to something. The Sound of Music may feature a goat-based puppet show and a gaggle of children in matching clothes made out of curtains, but Wise and Lehman actually diluted the stage play’s syrupy sentimentality: they skip from song to song without dwelling on any of the von Trapps’ triumphs or tragedies.

None of the children gets the chance to be too annoying; none of the romance is allowed to become too cloying. Andrews yomps through proceedings with no-nonsense briskness; Plummer stands back and observes them with a wry twinkle in his eye. Even the ending is restrained by today’s standards. We see the von Trapps hiking over the mountains and away from the Nazis, but there are no captions detailing what happened to them next, and no photographs of the real family. You can bet that if The Sound of Music had been made in 2015, it would have had both.

Plummer himself has come to acknowledge that the film is less mawkish than it might have been. As he says in an interview in the current issue of Vanity Fair, the director “did keep it from falling over the edge into a sea of treacle”. He’s right. The Sound of Music may be on the very edge of that treacly ocean, but it never quite falls in, and it’s this miraculous balancing act that keeps us watching, even after 50 years. Just ask Lady Gaga.

By Nicholas Barber

With thanks to BBC Culture