Robbie Williams is sticking up for Olivia Rodrigo following suggestions that her new single sounds a little like one of his own compositions.
On Monday morning, the chart-topping singer shared a lengthy message after Olivia’s new festive tune Take Me Home (4 Christmas) quickly faced comparisons with his own number number one hit Candy upon its release last week.
He began by reflecting on “something about the music industry that’s been bothering me for a while”, a phenomenon that he described as “people coming after people because they’ve spotted a similarity between two songs”.
“Some of it I completely understand. Some of it is absolutely justified. Most of it, I think, is complete bollocks,” he opined.
“I’ve had plenty of people come after me over the years because something I’ve released apparently sounds like something somebody else released. And sometimes I listen and think, ‘fair enough, I can hear that’. Other times I think, ‘are you having a fucking laugh?’.”
He pointed out: “There are only so many notes. Only so many chords. Only so many ways of putting them together before you inevitably find yourself somewhere somebody else has been.”
Turning his attention to the Grammy winner, Robbie enthused: “I love Olivia Rodrigo. I’ve loved her since Brutal. What a fucking record. I wish I’d made it. Also, I cannot believe how much she swears on stage. And that’s coming from me. I’m a Sweary Mary, but she’s making me look like a Victorian schoolmistress.
“Anyway. It sounds to me as though she may have accidentally stumbled across a musical echo of mine in one of her new songs. And do you know what? I couldn’t care less.”
Robbie insisted: “I don’t know whether there’s technically a publishing issue, a copyright issue, or no issue whatsoever. And I don’t want to know.
“I’m not going after her. Because I think at some point, some fucking sanity has to prevail.”
The Angels singer went on to claim that “there’s a difference between protecting your work and treating every vaguely familiar sequence of notes as a winning lottery ticket”.
“Some of this stuff has become ambulance chasing. And I think it’s disgusting,” he wrote.
“We all stand on the shoulders of people who came before us. Sometimes consciously.
Sometimes without even knowing it. That’s how music works.
“If we keep punishing people for accidentally arriving somewhere somebody else has already been, eventually we’re going to frighten the creativity out of everyone.”
HuffPost UK has contacted Olivia Rodrigo’s team for comment.
Olivia has found herself at the centre of similar discussions multiple times in the past, including some relating to Taylor Swift, of whom she once described herself as the biggest fan “in the whole world”.
When she released her debut album Sour in 2021, Taylor and her frequent collaborator Jack Antonoff were both named as co-writers on the track 1 Step Forward, 3 Steps Back as it featured an interpolation of the Reputation cut New Year’s Day.
Later down the line, the pair were also added as co-writers on the single Deja Vu, due to its similarities with Taylor’s song Cruel Summer.
In the past, Olivia has dismissed the suggestion that her own song Vampire alludes to this saga in its lyrics.
