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Business News Legal
Katy Perry sued over song similarities
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 3 July 2014
Having already angered Muslims with the pop promo for her track ‘Dark Horse’, Katy Perry has now managed to outrage Christians too with the very same track. I assume leaders of the Jewish faith are already playing the record backwards, just in case.
Though whereas Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ video annoyed many Muslims, it’s one specific Christian who is angry about the song. Christian rapper Flame, real name Marcus Gray, has taken offence because he reckons Perry’s hit lifts from his 2008 Gospel Music Association Dove Award-nominated track ‘Joyful Noise’.
And, because people will now think of Perry’s hit whenever they hear his track, ‘Joyful Noise’ has been, says Gray, “irreparably tarnished by its association with the witchcraft, paganism, black magic and Illuminati imagery evoked by the same music in ‘Dark Horse'”.
Gray and his collaborators on ‘Joyful Noise’ have now gone legal, after his DJ, Cho’zyn Boy, alerted him to online chatter about the similarities between the two records. Having posted a composite of the two tracks on SoundCloud, the DJ told Rapzilla: “What listeners are hearing is Katy Perry’s ‘Dark Horse’ at 66 beats per minute and they’re hearing Flame’s ‘Joyful Noise’ at 76 beats per minute”.
He went on: “When they’re separated, they seem a bit different, but when you bring them to the same tempo and you just change her pitch down one octave, they’re identical … When things are that similar, it’s hard to dispute”.
Whether there actually is a copyright infringement case to answer here remains to be seen, though if Gray’s backing track was indeed lifted by Perry, whose own first album was classified as Christian rock, I can’t believe God would approve. Though tedious Jesus would probably tell Gray to turn his other hip hop cheek and forgive the pop girl. Which is no fun at all.
