Posted on 10/14/2023 11:29:18 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Drake interpolates their 1986 Hot 100 chart-topper "West End Girls" on the For All the Dogs track.
As listeners continue to dissect Drake’s new album For All the Dogs, English synth-pop duo Pet Shop Boys are calling out the MC for interpolating their 1986 song “West End Girls” on “All the Parties” without proper credit or permission.
The lyrics in question come when Drake sings, “And it’s 6, our town a dead end world/ East End boys and West End girls.” In “West End Girls,” Pet Shop Boys sing: “In a West End town, a dead end world/ The East End boys and West End girls.”
Following the album’s release Friday (Oct. 6), Pet Shop Boys shared this message on X: “Surprising to hear @Drake singing the chorus of ‘West End Girls’ in the track ‘All the Parties’ on his new album. No credit given or permission requested.”
The credits for Drake’s “All the Parties,” which features Chief Keef, do not include Pet Shop Boys members Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe on Spotify Apple Music or the Songview database performance rights organizations use to track fractional ownership. As for “West End Girls,” the song enjoyed a fruitful run in 1986, netting the top slot on the Billboard Hot 100 that year — the group’s highest-charting song on the tally.
Drake has a long history of interpolating records. His most recent comes from T.I.’s 2003 song “24’s,” which subtly resides on Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss single “Rich Flex.” Certified Lover Boy included several samples from songs by The Beatles, *NSYNC and R. Kelly. His Hot 100 chart-topper “Way Too Sexy,” also from CLB, sampled Right Said Fred’s 1991 single “I’m Too Sexy.” Shortly after the album was released in September 2021, a source told Billboard that the writing credit splits had yet to be finalized. That’s a common practice among writers, but one that can become particularly problematic with interpolation as it gives the original songwriters and their rights holders greater leverage when negotiating a share of the song’s copyright.
Billboard reached out to Kobalt, which represents Tennant and Lowe’s publishing, and Drake’s reps for comment, but neither responded at time of publishing.
Drake needs to pay up. Those Petshop Boys probably need the money.
This isn’t just a case of a few music notes causing the issue as you often see happen in these court cases. He uses the actual words with similar music. Clear cut copying.
Ping
Pretty brazen l’d say.
I guess Drake got Money for Nothing.
I was shocked a while ago to learn in terms of certified sales from around the world that Drake is the number 1 artist of all time. Ahead of Elvis, the Beatles you name it. Now this is partly due to the modern era having certification of sales in many more countries than was the case back in day but it’s still shocking at least to me.
𝘐 𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘋𝘳𝘢𝘬𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘔𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘺 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘕𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨.
Probably still got chicks for free.
They’re still touring and doing just fine financially.
CC
Never heard of this guy.
Indeed so it’s not exactly a fair comparison but in raw numbers it’s still shocking.
Also: Inflation.
Those dollars don’t go nearly as far as they once did.
His first name is Sir Francis.
I would say no on the copying. Pet Shop Boys should get nothing. If this stands, then a lot more artist should should sue other artists.
Musical artists should write the own damm songs.
For instance, the artists Dustin Lynch and Jelly Roll have a song out called "Chevrolet" which is a new take of "Drift Away" (a Mentor Williams song made famous by Dobie Gray).
Mentor is given songwriting credits so all is good there.
In the days of Elvis and even The Beatles, record albums were fairly significant purchases. When I was a teen, I worked part time for $2.65 an hour and LPs at that time were running upwards of $8.98 - or about four hours of pay for me. So I did not buy too many albums back then.
It was considered rather significant for a music artist to sell 500,000 albums back in those days. When "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac moved 20 million units in 1977, well that was seen as simply a staggering sales number.
Nowadays, a newly released album by a big name artist can routinely stream 20 million times the first week of release.
Country artist Morgan Wallen released an album earlier this year ("One Thing At A Time") and it has streamed 3,500,000,000 billion times since (3.5 billion).
The most streamed album of all time is Bad Bunny's “Un Verano Sin Ti” which has streamed an incredible 14,500,000,000,000 times since it's 2022 release (and that's on Spotify alone).
It's a new world out there.
They also sampled petshop boys too without their permission!
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