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Gap Band added to Uptown Funk songwriter credits
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 5 May 2015
Mark Ronson’s hit ‘Uptown Funk!’ has itself another five songwriters, which is quite an achievement given it already had six. The new co-credits go to the writers of The Gap Band’s 1979 hit ‘Oops Upside Your Head’, which, well, let’s say it was a big influence on Ronson’s record.
Ronson, the track’s singer Bruno Mars, and his co-producers Jeffrey Bhasker and Phillip Lawrence were already sharing songwriting credits on (and royalties from) the track with Nicholas Williams (aka Trinidad James) and producer Devon Gallaspy as a result of the hit sampling the latter duo’s song ‘All Gold Everything’.
Added to the line up of ‘Uptown Funk!’ co-writers and beneficiaries now are Gap Banders Charlie, Robert and Ronnie Wilson, and their collaborators keyboardist Rudolph Taylor and producer Lonnie Simmons. Which is quite the party.
Interestingly ‘Oops’ publisher Minder Music made its claim against ‘Uptown Funk!’ via YouTube’s Content-ID system because, when you fail to build a Global Repertoire Database, the company you’re accusing of exploiting loopholes in copyright law ends up operating your industry’s de facto copyright dispute resolution system.
