Olivia Rodrigo's hit song Drivers License put her on the charts, and her first album Sour solidified her place there. But now, the starlet is under major scrutiny after listeners pointed out that a few of her songs and album artwork are identical to that of other well-known artists. Here are all of the details.
The 18-year-old artist is back in the headlines, but this time it's not for dropping a surprise music video. The news taking the internet by storm now? Paramore's Hayley Williams and Josh Farro were retroactively added as writers on Olivia's hit song, Good 4 U. It's no secret the latest song shares similarities to the rock band's 2007 track Misery Business, and it looks like now they're getting the credit for it.
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The Spotify record-breaker reportedly intentionally chose not to credit them as writers until the song and album were released. According to Variety, Olivia's decision to wait to credit the writers after the release was a misunderstanding because the song was an interpolation. That means that part of an older song was re-recorded and mixed into a newer track. Paramore's Hayley Williams uploaded an Instagram story that showed a screenshot from her publishing company with the updated credits.
Hayley commented on the screenshot, "Our publisher is wildin right now." The situation only intensified when Adam Levin spoke on the situation, saying, "I do think that we can meet this with a little more compassion and understanding...All this calling out and s**t, like, music is a creative thing. I just hate to see it crushed by... you know." The Grammy-winner was not here for haters criticizing Olivia's decision to take inspiration from Paramore's old work.
Adam added, "When you take someone who's a newer artist and she's doing things that kind of emulate the ones from generations removed, I don't know how bad that is. I think it's kind of a cool thing to introduce a whole generation of people to different musical ideas." Here's to hoping for a collab between Levine and Rodrigo in the future... A girl can dream.