Oh, he’s not having any of this!!!
A songwriter named Guy Hobbs filed a lawsuit against Elton John back in April over the lyrics used in his 1985 hit Nikita, but the musician is calling the charges “baseless and absurd.”
Hobbs alleges that many of the lyrics used in the song are taken from a song called Natasha that he wrote in 1982 and sent to Elton’s music publishing company only to never hear back. On top of calling Rocket Man out for stealing such brilliantly generic words such as “I need you,” “just,” and “never,” this guy thinks he stole the entire idea for the song.
Hobbs’ Natasha is based on his affair with a Russian cruise ship waitress, while Elton’s Nikita is about an East German female border guard during the Cold War.
Since you can’t copyright an idea behind a song and the lyrics are “commonplace elements”, Elton and co-writer Bernie Taupin have fired back, saying:
“The suggestion that the Grammy-Award winning composer/lyricist team of Elton John and Bernie Taupin … would need to copy these commonplace elements from [Hobbs’] lyrics is not only baseless and absurd, but it also misses the essential legal point.”
A judge has yet to make a decision on the case, but the defendants want it dismissed.
Based on the information sources are presenting, it sounds like Elton John won’t have to pay out unspecified damages for a lawsuit THIRTY YEARS in the making.
[Image via Mavrix Online.]