But Costello was unperturbed by the usage, tweeting “It’s how rock and roll works. Rodrigo’s song “Brutal,” the leadoff track from Sour, appropriates the signature guitar riff from Elvis Costello’s song “Pump It Up.” It’s not subtle–the riff is right there, recognizable as can be. Maybe Rodrigo is just a nice, non-confrontational person, and maybe she’s just really eager to see her influences receive their proper credit. But we live in a litigous society, and so it may have been a calculation by Olivia Rodrigo and her teams (legal, PR, record label, etc.) that handing out co-writer status would stave off costly and publicity-negative lawsuits. And the elements borrowed here are minimal. They’re a solid band with a number of good albums under their collective belts, and if this brings them some additional attention as well as money, well that’s all to the good, I suppose.īut Taylor Swift hardly needs the money, and neither do Antonoff or Clark, really. While the group has maintained a solid fan base, they never really hit the way many industry observers guessed they might. Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams and former guitarist Josh Farro certainly stand to gain, and that makes some sense. It seems possible that Rodrigo would have to pay the other artists something, but probably not as much as they’ll make as passive co-writers. I ask myself–why would Olivia Rodrigo fork over what looks to be millions of dollars (an estimated 1.2 to 2 million for the Paramore song alone) if her use of elements and riffs inspired by other artists is limited to interpolations or even less? I mean, the simplest thing to do would be to wait for someone to file an actual lawsuit and then have lawyers deal with it. On the latter track, Rodrigo uses a piano melody taken from Swift’s song “New Year’s Day.” The former utilizes elements of Swift’s song “Cruel Summer.” Rodrigo uses the term ‘interpolation’ in describing these uses of other people’s material, meaning that the elements were adapted and played by actual musicians on sessions for Rodrigo’s album rather than sampled from the work of other artists, but mostly it’s just a surface resemblance. Vincent) and “1 Step forward, 3 Steps back” to include Swift and Antonoff. Rodrigo has also added songwriting credits to her songs “Deja Vu” to include Taylor Swift, Jack Antonoff, and Annie Clark (St. She was gracious about Courtney Love’s bitching regarding the Sour Prom video’s artwork, which frankly came nowhere near copying Hole’s Live Through This album. ![]() ![]() Recent reports have indicated that Rodrigo’s team was in contact with representatives for Paramore prior to the release of ‘Good 4U’, which indicates that 1) Rodrigo and her co-writer, producer Dan Nigro had some feeling for the proximity of the two songs, and 2) Rodrigo wasn’t trying to pull a fast one over on anyone, which jibes with her overall aesthetic, which is to readily acknowledge her influences. The two songs share a similarity, but not to the point that one was plagiarized from the other. It’s so much more about a feeling and the way the nuances of the delivery can remind the listener of another song. That notion was supported by a viral mashup of the two songs on YouTube, although it seems like the idea behind a mashup is to mix songs with similar characteristics or that create a dialogue with each other as seamlessly as possible. They aren’t court-level documentation of a deliberate similarity between songs. It was noted that Olivia’s song 4U” was very similar to Paramore’s “Misery Business,” a single the band released in 2007. This appears to have happened because of commentary zinging around social media about the similarities between certain Rodrigo songs and songs by Swift and Hayley. In short, it’s a cultural moment that found millions of people converging around this single album, something that happens less and less frequently, yet I find her trending on Twitter because of a story about how she has given away millions of dollars in royalties by handing out co-composer credits on several songs to Taylor Swift, Hayley Williams of the group Paramore, and their songwriting teams. ![]() ![]() It’s created the kind of fervor that was previously only seen upon the release of a new Taylor Swift album, or the latest Marvel film, or a new Harry Potter book. Here she is with Sour, one of the most incredibly successful albums of 2021 in a period when albums aren’t supposed to be such a big deal.
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