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Did Lily Allen Rip Off Akira The Don?!

If you listened to this week’s most excellent and righteous DONCAST you’ll be up on this already, but if not, there’s been an interesting discovery round these parts this week. A Michael Fitzgerald wrote me the following email:

I was just curious as to the association between your song off When We Were Young and the song “Him” from Lily Allen’s newest album. I noticed there is an uncanny resemblance between the melody of these two songs and was wondering if they are simply based on the same sample or if you worked with her on the production of that particular song?

By the way, this about my favorite song off that album…always gets a positive reaction even here in Moscow, Idaho. Unfortunately, its a little hard to get a hold of your albums here in Idaho…

-Thanks,

Mike

Cheers Mike! Well, as you can hear in the clip above, I was entirely unaware of this – as was my special guest Joey2tits… so we had a listen to the songs to see if there really was any resemblance. In case your life has been tragically bereft so far, and you’ve never heard it, here’s my ’05 sunshine masterpiece , Oh What A Glorious Thing:

Amazing. And here’s Lily Allen’s Him, from 2009′s It’s Not Me, It’s You

DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN!

No WAY!

WOAH!

That was my initial reaction, anyway. Lily’s song is evidently built around a replay of the same guitar loop my song is – the first few bars of Nico’s gorgeous and lugubrious These Days. Now, its not unusual for people to sample similar things, no matter how obscure. What makes this ultra-suspect is the context – UK pop-rap, and the fact that the beat drops in exactly the same fashion, as does the bass. I played with Ms Allen when she was promoting her first album also. Oh yeah! AND! A couple of years ago my manager at the time had some meetings with Greg Kurstin who, having listened to my debut LP, was keen to work with me on my second. Scheduling conflicts stopped this from happening, however, as Kurstin was about to go into the studio with – yep – Lily Allen!

DAMN!

The big difference, of course, is that Oh! What A Glorious Thing has an amazing chorus, and Him has a horrible chorus.

What do you think?

— Friday, April 23rd, 2010

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  • http://myspace.com/billyrock Corbin Lykins

    I'm glad my buddy Mike brought this up, it's complete rubbish. If she's (and/or her producers) are going to be ripping people off they should at least do a decent job of it.

    We all know who the king is ;-)

  • Precaution

    I'd ship off an e-mail to the producer and Lily herself before you do anything DRASTIC.

    Although, trolling her on youtube can't be a bad thing. I mean, if anything, you make a big fiasco and direct people to your music.

    You'll be Fa-maws dawling!

    You know, moreso.

  • http://fuckyeahhorror.com/ jimboeth

    I dunno whether to be annoyed or not. Sample aside, there be some hefty coincidences there, bubba.

  • zp

    …jesus christ monkey balls! She REALLY likes your music, loves it so much she's gotta rip your most iconic (a contender for sure) piece, in fact BLATENTLY rip it (except the chorus)(which is basically the usual Lilly rehash of some tedious Grove Armada in a faux cockney lizard lounge voice).

    Now you could go all Eddie Grant/ Robert Smith on her arse/ass, but what would be the point in that? Nah, this is a golden opportunity to rain terrible humiliations and sarcasm and scorn down upon her from a righteous hight, and so on. And of course the really money shot is that Ms Allen's a prominent (if frightfully inept) member of the 'copying a song is copyright theft' bunch!

    Honestly, it doesn't get any more glorious than this. Do you think it's a trap…..?

  • marsamgod

    How about a Dan Bull style open letter to Lily? To think she gets her knickers in a twist about people downloading from file sharing sites yet she can blatantly RIP YOU OFF.

    Never liked her anyway, anyone one who comes up with rhyming "Tesco" and "Al Fresco" deserves knocking down a peg or two

  • Richard from Illinoi

    "Sue sue sue sue" LOL

  • Mona

    What a shame. I love you and Lily, though I never realized the similarity before. It'd be quite funny if you sued her. Not for you, for me.

  • http://facebook robert

    lilys song does not even sound the same

    • lol

      Do you have ears?… Same riff, same bass line… Listen to the notes.

  • http://www.wonchop.net Wonchop

    'This track is currently not available'

    Ooh, did they boot you off Soundcloud?

  • http://www.johnnynothing.com Johnny Nothing

    Surely the thing to do is rip off her biggest tune and then make a big noise about it. Second option: free-for-all mash-up of Akira and Allen. Best one makes your next mix. But I think it would be better coming from you.

  • Kevin_likes_water

    Get over yourself. If anything, Lily would be paying homage to Nico, who has been a very influential person in a lot of people's music. Do something more productive with your life other than crying. Tsssssssssssssssss

  • Tom

    To be fair, your song kinda rips off The Lovecats by The Cure…

    • Anonymous

      LOOOL