By Maggie Baring
Fans of the Leicester-based indie-pop group, Easy Life, have recently been deeply saddened by the ridiculously surreal news that the band are being sued by the large, corporate brand easyGroup for being “brand thieves”. Easy Life announced on their Instagram on the 2nd October that ‘Easy Jet are suing us for being called Easy Life’, whilst also making light of the pettiness of the claims: ‘for those of you that bought gig tickets and ended up on a budget flight to Tenerife, I apologise’. The band’s sarcasm casts light on the almost laughable situation which has formulated; a large, well established corporate brand bullying a relatively small band formed in 2017 by talented young musicians, for no apparent reason. Easy Life’s two previous albums reached no. 2 on the British charts, their top song, “Nightmares”, has 59 million streams on Spotify, and they have amassed 182k followers on Instagram. The situation that has unfolded has proved, once again, how difficult the life of a musical artist can be. The commercial flaws in the industry allow such injustices to take place, with a simple case of ‘corporate greed’ (as MP Kevin Brennan wrote), showing that the odds are continually stacked against the creative industries. Even when successful artists such as Easy Life earn enough to live comfortably off their career, it is nothing compared to the expense of defending themselves against unfounded lawsuits which would cost ‘upward of a million’ pounds in legal fees.
Easy Life fans have greeted this news with an outpouring of love and support for the band, outrage at easyGroup’s intimidation, and suggestions to set up crowd-funding pages to finance the band’s ‘very, very strong case’ (Matravers, 5th October). The evidence that easyGroup’s case against Easy Life is unfounded is concrete and obvious, as the band formed and played their first gig in 2015, whilst easyGroup only applied for trademarking of the name, ‘Easy Life’ in 2022. Furthermore, in a similar case involving trademarking and easyGroup in July 2021, a judge ruled that ‘the word ‘easy’ is not distinctive. It is a descriptive word’, suggesting that ‘easyGroup’s claims over the ownership of the word, ‘easy’, are unfounded. Nevertheless, the band cannot afford the legal fees and must give into the ‘David versus Goliath’ situation that they find themselves in, even with the frustrating knowledge that their chances of winning the suit were high had they been able to afford to defend themselves.
The band have had no choice but to give in to easyGroup’s bullying, and on Friday the 13th, played their final concert in London at Koko. On the same day, they released their final song as ‘Easy Life’, called ‘Trust Exercises’. The song aptly celebrates those in your life who are trustworthy enough to fall back on in moments of need. Easy Life fans have done just this – realising the words of the song in real life: ‘open up, you know you’re family | This is a trust exercise, you can fall back on me’. The bond between the fan and artist has always, for me, seemed a sacred thing. The audience places great trust in the artist when they listen to honest and open songs about difficult experiences which they may relate to. The artist’s responsibility to uphold this trust through their song writing and music must be continually recognised in order for this trust to grow in strength. This strength of support can then be used, in turn, for the artist to fall back on in their times of need. We see this on countless occasions when an artist-fan relationship has exhibited its power. When Lewis Capaldi’s mental health and Tourette’s Syndrome prohibited him from finishing his set at Glastonbury in June, so his fans finished off his set for him with rousing singing, for example. Easy Life may not be able to fight against the wealth and power of easyGroup, but the outpouring of support from their fans prove that their impact, and the market into which they are sharing their songs, is one of love and support. Easy Life’s victory is a moral one, and I know which side of the dispute I would far rather be on.
Photo credit @easylife on Instagram