Sting wrote the lyrics but Summers and Copeland made the music and where ripped off by Sting, back in the day (1980s). Why were these two so stupid to allow this?
These rip-offs were common. But in this day and age they get reviewed by courts, with many songwriters having to share their songwriting royalties going forward. Screw Sting, he has not put out anything good since 1990s Ten Summoners Tales.
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-WIKIPEDIA>>>
Ten Summoner’s Tales is the fourth solo studio album by English musician Sting. The title is a combined pun of his family name, Sumner, and a character in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, the summoner. Released in 1993, it explores themes of love and morality in a noticeably upbeat mood compared to his previous release, the introspective The Soul Cages, released in 1991 after the loss of both his parents in the 1980s.
This album contains two US hits; “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” reached No. 17 on the Billboard Hot 100 while “Fields of Gold” got to No. 23.[22]
Ten Summoner’s Tales was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize. In 1994, it was nominated for six Grammy awards including Album of the Year (losing to Whitney Houston‘s The Bodyguard), winning Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, Best Male Pop Vocal Performance (”If I Ever Lose My Faith in You”) and Best Long Form Music Video, while “If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” was also nominated for Record and Song of the Year.
It's interesting how different bands approach this issue. In the case of the Beatles, Lennon and McCartney agreed to share songwriting credits while the band was together, regardless if either one wrote the entire song. The Doors shared credits on everything with everyone in the band, though Jim Morrison wrote most of the lyrics. (A notable exception was Light My Fire, written by their guitarist Robby Krieger).
Not sure what the law is here, but it would seem to me that if Copeland and Summers allowed Sting to keep the rights to the songs, that's a bad move on their part.
Isn't there two different kinds of royalties? Composer (or lyricist) and performance royalties? You would think the band would get something.