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Pandora opens box
Could it be that Scooch's entry for the Eurovision Song Contest is little more than a derivative, second generation copy of something else?
I believe the answer is "well, duh"; but now Erin Magnusson - who trades as Pandora in Sweden has claimed that Flying The Flag is, actually, her song No Regrets. She's calling for Scooch to be disqualified from the contest.
Per Herrey, legal adviser for the Swedish Musicians’ Union, told me: “Eurovision rules state they cannot use a song that has been released before and the melody of the chorus is the same as Pandora’s.”
Now, we're neither Swedish, nor a lawyer, but we can see a bit of difference between "a song that has been released before" and "a song which, to some ears, appears to have the same melody in the chorus".
Scooch, for their part, point out that they've never heard of Pandora, or heard her music before. However, we do understand they're learning the chorus to My Lovely Horse as a fallback.
4 comments:
A piece of trivia for you: One of Pandora's songs was used as the soundtrack for a cosmetics ad in Japan. It was then ditched in favour of a Foo Fighters song.
Pandora sucks...
I have known Pandora since 1998 when she first had "A Little Bit" released in Australia. I have followed her career since... but of course the first period was of admiration, the second, not so much. Let me explain. I used to LOVE Pandora's music, I thought she was great, and at the time she really was. I was the admin of her biggest (and only) online fan club, where her (very few) fans got together.
She was somewhat successful in the 90's in Scandinavia, she was very successful in Japan, and she did well in Australia. But Pandora was never a household name. And of course most importantly, Pandora never had a release in the UK!
In 2000, Pandora blamed Kylie Minogue for "stealing" her song On A Night Like This. First of all, we all know the "stealing" is an extremely infantile way for a music artist to claim plagiarism. Fact is, Pandora did recorded the song first, but it was written by Brian Rawling, not Pandora. Naturally, Rawling sold the song to multiple artists. Her accusations were published in a couple of magazines, but naturally nothing really came of it.
Later on I slowly stopped liking Pandora simply because her music was getting worse. Her albums A Little Closer, Won't Look Back and 9 Lives were quite awful, and I simply lost interest in her. She was trying really hard to be taken more seriously has a music artist. But the more acoustic sound she was trying to pull off simply didn't work. The last material which I personally consider to be good is her No Regrets....
Which brings me to today's topic. Scooch vs. Pandora! Her album No Regrets was never released ANYWHERE other than Japan years ago. This is also the album which her version of On A Night Like This was released. Pandora's previous behavior obviously suggests that she has tendencies to seek out cheap publicity by blaming other music artists for stealing her music. This time she had a much better chance than Kylie, simply because the song sounds alike. I do agree that overall the melody is somewhat similar. But knowing who Pandora is very well, I assure you that nor Scooch or the writers of Flying the Flag have ever heard of Pandora or her songs.
Pandora is definitely one of the world's most failed music acts. At least in the standards, which she obviously sets to herself. To try and get international publicity this way, rather than sing and be happy with her small success, all I have to say as an ex-fan: Pandora, shame on you!
The songs are practically identical and that is all there is to it. It is obviously a much better idea to plagiarise something which is not well-known than to plagiarise something instantly recognisable. And just because they SAY they've never heard of Pandora or her song, it doesn't mean they're telling the truth. What's fair is fair and there are ways to determine if the two songs are way too similar for this song to be allowed to compete. Whether you like Pandora or not, the songs are too similar. If it's a coincidence, tough titty for the british band.
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