pakuripakurare

The music industry is full of allegations of plagiarism.  Melodies and samples used intentionally or accidentally can land artists in a heap of trouble. One such case broke out last night between two bands — one Japanese and one Australian — not over the music but their nearly identical music videos.

It all started a few days ago when Japanese rock band Champagne released a video for their seventh single Forever Young. It was well received by fans who called it “a lovely song.”

However, shortly after the cheers turned to jeers as someone pointed out stark similarities to a video released by the Australian band Clubfeet months earlier for their single Everything You Wanted.

Both videos feature the lead singer walking in a straight path into still images of themselves. Here is the Clubfeet video.

The Champagne video is nearly identical to this aside from slight variations on the setting and angles.  The similarities were so strong that in both videos the other band members enter the shot at the 35 second mark and at exactly the same moment (one minute three seconds) both lead singers jump off of something.

This resulted in the Champagne video’s YouTube pages to become flooded with cries of “rip-off” and “the shame of Japan.” Clubfeet responded on their twitter account.

Although the tweet sounded rather stern, their facebook comment added a more playful “flattered but a little envious of their hairdos.”

As the comments were continuing to build, suddenly all postings of Champagne’s Forever Young video were pulled from YouTube and NicoNico. About an hour later, the band released an official apology on their label’s website.

Apologies from members of [Champagne]

First of all, we would like to show our deepest apologies to the members of Clubfeet,
those who were involved in making “Everything You Wanted” music video,
and to the fans of Clubfeet for the situation caused by our newest music video.

Our management company, UK Project Inc., has recently announced that ”
It is definitely not intended by members of [Champagne],
and all production for music video shall be responsible by us, UK Project Inc. “,
but we would have to say, from our point of view, we were involved in production since
we had actually been in the video, and also had checked the final version of the video
with our own eyes before it was released in public.

We would also like to apologize to our fans of [Champagne] for this situation.

To be truly honest, we have to admit that this video deserves to be criticized as
a “rip-off video”. We do regret it, and we promise to do our best more than ever
so that this kind of thing will never happen again.

4.10.2013

[Champagne]

Yoohei Kawakami
Hiroyuki Isobe
Masaki Shirai
Satoyasu Shoumura

This message was shortly followed by one from the label promising to never use the Forever Young video again and giving further apologies to Clubfeet and the fans of both bands.

Just hours ago Clubfeet responded to the apology on their Twitter account.

So it appears all’s well that ends well. The groups settled their differences like gentlemen and Clubfeet got a boat load of publicity in Japan. After writing stories about guys with eels eating their intestines it’s nice to have a happy ending every once in a while.

Clubfeet: Twitter, facebook
RX-Records: Official Site
Everything You Wanted: YouTube – helloclubfeet