Olivia Rodrigo is one of the biggest starts in the pop world right now, having become the first female solo artist to hold three UK Top 5 singles simultaneously with Traitor, Good 4 U, and Déjà Vu. Rodrigo started out her career, as so many young stars do, as an actor on the Disney Channel. Rodrigo is most well-known for her roles as Paige Olvera in Bizaardvark, and as Nina Salazar-Roverts in mockumentary series High School Musical: The Musical: The Series. Earlier this year, in January 2021, she broke into the music world with her debut single Driver’s License, which broke Spotify’s streaming record for most streams in one day twice within its first week on the service. Olivia repeated this success with her two following singles, Déjà Vu and Good 4 U, making her the first artist to hold top 10 spots with their first two releases. Now releasing the rest of her debut album, SOUR, Rodrigo has gained international acclaim and has won or been nominated for multiple music awards for her debut pieces.
However, not everybody has been singing Rodrigo’s praises. Since the release of some of her songs, listeners have been drawing comparisons to the word of other artists and highlighting similarities which go beyond pure coincidence. This response was particularly strong for her song Good 4 U, which instantly struck fans as similar to 2000s pop punk band Paramore’s hit song Misery Business, which released in 2007. This prompted a TikTok trend of mashing the two songs together to display the similarities clearly for listeners.
Now it seems that Rodrigo has listened to fans, and has retroactively granted writing credits to two members of Paramore, lead singer Haley Williams and ex-lead guitarist Josh Farro. Williams first shared this news on her Instagram story, reposting the announcement from Warner Chappell Music and adding the caption “Our publisher is wildin’ rn”. The worth of the credits is estimated to be between $1.2 million and $2 million.
This is not the first time Rodrigo has been accused of releasing derivative work or piggy-backing on the success of other artists. She has also been accused to copying a riff from Elvis Costello’s Pump It Up, and Courtney Love has suggested online that the star copied the album artwork from her 1994 Album Live Through This.
From what we can tell, Rodrigo is making a habit of offering writing credits out to any artists that may have inspired her work, showing that she is at least attempting to ensure proper credit goes where it is due. For more entertainment industry news, stay tuned here