Madonna and producer win ‘Vogue’ sampling lawsuit

Madonna and producer Robert "Shep" Pettibone have won a lawsuit that claimed they illegally sampled a tune on her 1990 international hit Vogue.

Last July, US company VMG Salsoul sued, claiming that Vogue had used the horns and strings from the Salsoul Orchestra’s 1977 Ooh, I Love It (Love Break). It contended that Pettibone had deliberately hidden the sample, and that it had taken VMG twenty years to sue because new technology had shown it up.

VMG also contended that it had hired Pettibone to remix Love Break, before he worked on Vogue.

But a U.S. District Court judge in California has ruled that the sampling of the horns was “trivial” in that it could not be recognised by anyone who listened to Vogue, The Hollywood Reporter said.

It’s an interesting case for sampling. In 2006, the standard seemed to be set when a judge said that even the tiniest of samples constituted copyright infringement. In this case, it was rap band NWA sampling a two-second Funkadelic guitar riff.

In the Vogue case, though the judge made her findings not on how long the sample was but how well it could be heard.

Vogue originally began life as the flipside of Keep It Together, inspired by the dance movement in New York gay clubs where dancers used hand gestures to imitate their favourite Hollywood stars. It was included on the I’m Breathless album which included music inspired by the Dick Tracy movie in which Madonna appeared. It became one of her biggest hits, selling six million copies. It was the biggest seller of 1990, and topping the charts in 30 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, the UK and the US.

Even at the time of release, critics noted that the track had used the horns and strings from Love Break, and the bassline from MFSB’s Love Is The Message.