Is this year’s winning song in Melodifestivalen a plagiarism? It is an accusation that the Spanish newspaper ABC has directed against Sweden’s entry in the Eurovision Song Contest, Tattoo.
Last weekend, Loreen took home the win in Melodifestivalen – just over a decade after her first win in the competition.
In this year’s edition of the competition, Loreen participated with the song Tattoo, with whom she will now compete in the Eurovision Song Contest later this spring. But according to Spanish ABC, there is a problem with the song: it is too reminiscent of other songs.
The newspaper writes that “fragments” of the song are reminiscent of ABBA’s The Winner Takes It Allwhile the chorus is reminiscent of the 2012 winning song Euphoriaalso performed by Loreen.
Another thing that many have reacted to is the song’s instrumental intro, which they say is very similar to the intro to Pont Aeris Flying Free from 1999. Twitter user Paula G illustrated this similarity in a post that currently has over 50,000 views.
Hotly debated topic
Plagiarism is something that has been hotly debated, especially in popular music in recent years. Last April, Ed Sheeran was vindicated in the high-profile trial in which he defended himself against accusations that the chorus of his song Shape of You would be plagiarism.
In his justification, the artist pointed out, among other things, that the melody in question was based on a key sequence based on the pentatonic minor scale, which meant that it is too general to be plagiarized.
After the verdict, Sheeran released a statement saying such allegations are “harmful” to the songwriting industry:
“While we are obviously happy with the outcome, I feel that these types of allegations are far too common these days. It has become a culture where you make an accusation, but the idea is to achieve a settlement even if the accusation is baseless,” he said and continued:
“It’s harmful to the songwriting industry. There are a limited number of notes and a few chords used in pop music. Coincidences are inevitable if 60,000 songs are released on Spotify daily. That’s 22 million songs a year and there are only twelve notes to use.”
