Justin Hawkins recently shared a video on his YouTube channel to address the plagiarism the singers and artists are facing nowadays and gave a few tips to Olivia Rodrigo for the latest accusations.
Rodrigo has been accused of copying some of the popular songs of earlier years in her music, including Paramore, Elvis Costello, Courtney Love, and such. While some listeners have noticed that the singer’s songs are ‘copied and pasted‘ from other songs, a few claimed that the chord progressions she used were the same as many other popular songs.
Hawkins addressed the situation and advised Rodrigo to educate herself by listening to more music. He was also able to catch the similarities between her song and other artists’ songs. He said:
“You’ve got to educate yourself. You’ve got to listen to music, listen to stuff. I actually did my daily exercise ritual today while listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s music, and I heard things in there that reminded me of ‘Pump It Up’ by Elvis Costello. There was another one that… I mean, it wasn’t the same chords, I’m not accusing anybody of ripping anything off, but I think that elder of her song collaboration, I think, takes a lot of influence from a lot of things that I was listening to growing up.”
The Darkness frontman then shared what might be causing the accusations:
“You can hear things like ‘Talk, talk less what you make it’ in one of her songs. There’s stuff like that going on, and it’s just drawing influence. But the problem is if you get pretty close to something, you can’t really deny having heard some of these songs because the things that she is influenced by are really, really popular songs. Just got to listen to some music, you know.”
After listening to the song and reading a follower’s comment about the song, he continued:
“There is nothing wrong with it. The dissonant stuff is cool, it gives it a bit of a Pixies vibe. That solo thing at the end really sounds like ‘Icky Thump’ actually, by The White Stripes, these are all her influences anyway, so, she said that.”
The follower claimed that it was a great example of meshing rock elements with pop lyrics and beats and that she was introducing rock-styled music to the newer generation. He agreed with the comment and added:
“I don’t think there is anything wrong with this, it’s just… I think in fact, if anything, I probably agree with [the fan] where this could be like a gateway song into the realms of sort of alternative rock, but it’s super pop. I’m actually really curious about what my daughter thinks about this song, I’m going to play it to her and see what she reckons.”
The pop-rock singer addressed the accusations and claimed that nothing in music is new and that there are four chords in every song. Elvis Costello also commented on the incident and said it was fine by him and that it is how rock ‘n’ roll works.
See the full video below.
