You may have missed last Sunday nights episode of 60 minutes, but Karl Stefanovic’s interview with ex-Neighbours actress and multi-platinum selling artist, Delta Goodrem was a rudimentary piece of celebrity gossip. The fluff piece didn’t discuss the only newsworthy sentiment and that was Goodrem’s imitation of Arcade Fire’s ‘Rebellion/Lies’ on her latest single, ‘Sitting on Top of the World’.
Headed with the tag line of; “She’s the diva dividing the nation,” the interview addressed why the Australian people might be polarised by the songstress, in relation to her coaching role on The Voice. Many have attacked Goodrem’s antics on the show, claiming that she’s fake and dishonest.
She said in the interview, that she was “confused” by people’s criticism of her sincerity. But we’re not here to talk about how she is less genuine than a barbie doll on The Voice, you can watch the next episode to see that for yourself.
In the interview she declared to Stefanovic that “anything goes”. While Stefanovic may have never heard of Arcade Fire, as a journalist he should have at least known about the controversy. But we shouldn’t really be resting all the blame upon the Today co-host, 60 minutes and Nine staged this interview as a crossover promotion for The Voice.
Instead of addressing the obvious question at hand, which is her credibility as an artist, Stefanovic asked Goodrem about her past relationships. Which included her ex-boyfriends Brian McFadden, from around seven years ago and Nick Jonas from the Jonas Brothers. Just to hazard a guess, but you don’t really care about her love life do you?
Neither do we. So we’re going to address what Stefanovic and 60 Minutes failed to.
Questions surfaced over the complete lack of authenticity of her latest single, ‘Sitting on Top of the World’ after the online community were up in arms about its startling likeness to Arcade Fire’s ‘Rebellion/Lies’, when the song was released in April.
You can judge for yourself by listening to the mash-up of both songs here:
The singer has already been questioned on the criticism that she received from her blatant rip-off of ‘Rebellion/Lies’. Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Goodrem said that she was not aware of the song before co-writing it with her producer, John Shanks and labelled the issue as a “storm in a teacup”.
Just in case you didn’t know, ‘Rebellion/Lies’ comes from the Grammy award winning outfits debut album, Funeral. It made it to no.19 on the UK charts. NME placed the song at 29 in their 50 ‘Greatest Indie Anthems Ever’ and it ranked at 69 in Pitchforks ‘Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s’. Needless to say, the song is pretty famous and it’s fair to suggest that maybe at least one person in her team would have heard it before.
Actually, we’re sure they’ve heard it before, because if they hadn’t, the tempo and melody of Goodrem’s single wouldn’t have that striking similarity to ‘Rebellion/Lies’. ‘Sitting on Top of the World’ entered the ARIA charts at no.2 and since the initial uproar, most people have let the songs inadequacies slip by the wayside.
We have no beef with Goodrem’s style of music, because as the common expression goes; each to their own. But using other people’s ideas and claiming the credit as your own is simply unethical.
The Music.com.au have also drawn comparisons between another new song by Goodrem, entitled Uncovered, and Kate Miller-Heidke’s ‘Last Day on Earth’. Although it appears that apart from a similar opening piano note, the singers camp are in the clear on this one.
As a well known representative of Australia’s music scene Goodrem has a responsibility as an ambassador to the industry and should be held accountable for associating the ideas in her song as her own, when undoubtedly the song steals so much from the Arcade Fire track.
What she and her team have done is artless, tasteless and if not a crime within itself, it’s definitely a violation against music in general. It’s a slap in the face to artists who labour over their craft to create something new or at the very least authentic. What Goodrem has done is set a bad example for young musicians in the making and those other ‘talented’ people she’s meant to be coaching on The Voice.
We’re not just clutching at straws here, we don’t hate the singer, if she had of done this to a less respected or well known artist, the same rules would have applied. This is about respecting the art and integrity of a band’s work. Other artists wouldn’t get away this, why should you, Delta?
