Billionaire nepo baby Stealla Thefty (not to be confused with Ella Langley) has been accused of plagiarizing 5 songs, thus far. An expert for Billboard weighed in.
[Here are the 5 songs for those that need a refresher]–“Boston” was compared to Noah Kahan’s “Stick Season.” Kahan’s team reached out to her about the similarities before the song’s official release, and thus received a retroactive songwriting credit.
–“Summer You Were Mine” was compared to The Chicks’ “There’s Your Trouble.” An interpolation credit was added after initially being omitted. Her label (Atlantic Records) later told Rolling Stone that the original songwriters (Tia Sillers and Mark Selby) had always been credited, but that their names had been left off Spotify and Apple due to “a streaming platform error.” Sure Jan.
–“Why Wouldn’t We” has drawn comparisons to both Blake Shelton’s “I’ll Name the Dogs” and Miley Cyrus’ “The Climb.” No retroactive songwriting credit given.
–“Misery” was compared to “A Million Dreams” from the movie The Greatest Showman. No retroactive songwriting credit given.
–“Seven Eleven” sparked similarities to Wheatus’ 2000 alt-rock hit “Teenage Dirtbag.” She actually did a cover of this song before. No retroactive songwriting credit given for this one either.
“Coincidental similarity between short bits of melody is way more common than people think it is,” said Joe Bennett, a professor at Berklee College of Music. “And songwriters simply being out of ideas and plagiarizing each other is way less common than people think it is.”
“Oh, and most songs are about love,” Bennett jokes. “So yeah, there are overlaps.”
“Do we really want to live in a world where you can’t go from a G in bar one to a pushed A in bar two on a melodic fragment without paying Noah Kahan?” Bennett asks. “Do we want to live in a world where these small fragments are owned by someone and you can’t reuse them?”
“That answer will hardly satisfy Lefty’s detractors,” added Billboard.
