Elbow's Guy Garvey Backs Pink Floyd's Legal Win Over EMI

Echoing the sentiments made in a March 2008 interview with Gigwise, Elbow's Guy Garvey has once again spoken out about the need to protect the album “art form.”

The singer made the comments in the light of Pink Floyd winning a landmark court case with EMI last week where they successfully argued that their record contract “expressly prohibited” the “unbundling” of album tracks.

Writing in The Guardian, Garvey said: “I was over the moon when I heard that Pink Floyd had won their legal battle with EMI last week.

“It wasn't because I saw it as a David v Goliath victory – Pink Floyd are pretty gigantic – but because, as a musician, the integrity of the album means everything to me.”

He went on to write: “That's the thing with an album: you spend a big chunk of your life making it and you think about every note, bleep, squeak and crackle.

“When you've put your heart and soul into something, you want people to hear it as it was intended.”

He finished: “The integrity of the artists making that music should be respected. That's why I'm knocked out that Pink Floyd won: the album is an art form that deserves protection.”

Two years back, Garvey called for digital download services to give artists the the choice to lock their albums, lamenting the album as a “dying as an art form”.

“It needs looking after, it needs protecting, internet music companies like iTunes need to let artists present and sell their music in the way they want to,” he told Gigwise.

“Ultimately, iTunes is a device for selling hardware, MP3 playing hardware, so they should give the artists the freedom to lock their records if they want and it’s something that I’m personally gonna see if I can make happen because it’s ****ing important.”