BANKS put out a track last year called “Waiting Game”. A few people on the internet wet their pants over it and proclaimed her the saviour of pop music, the mother to their unborn grandchildren, and the superglue to every broken heart.
Then in February this year, a British girlband called Neon Jungle (think Spice Girls if they had Tumblr and were only allowed to shop in Zara) put out a song called “Waiting Game”. It wasn’t a coincidence; it wasn’t even a re-work. Neon Jungle straight up ripped BANKS’s single and released it as their own with no credit and no hat-tip. Not even a RT.
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Obviously bands cover other bands’ songs all the time, but from vocal style to production this seems like a straight up steal. If you would like to compare the two songs, and how similar they sound, please watch the examples below.
lt’s all the crueler, because while Banks is yet to release her album, Neon Jungle just dropped their debut album this week which, among nine other tracks that are about as entertaining as a toddler repeatedly jamming a Fisher Price microphone into your jugular, included “Waiting Game”. Naturally, BANKS fans are pissed off.
They have called the Neon Jungle girls bobbleheads, stealing trollops, and cunts. Here is an example of just some of the sort of comments that are currently decorating Neon Jungle’s Facebook page:
Some fair points.
BANKS, in a Facebook post, responded to claims she may have leant the song to Neon Jungle by saying: “People keep asking why I let Neon Jungle put my song “Waiting Game” on their album when my album has yet to come out. The answer is I was never asked. I was as shocked as you to see this song made up of my own heartbeats on their album. A song that was born from my real life, my real heartache, my real fingertips when I was at one of the most confusing times in my life….
I am a new artist and new to this business and I am told it is legal”.
This, is of course, the oldest trick in the book. In the early days of pop, white artists would often re-record “race records” and sell them to much larger audiences, sometimes before the original record had been released. During the height of Motown, the biggest stars in the world would record the same song and wait to see whose version did best.
So if you’ve ever wondered why, for example, Joan Jett let Britney run riot through her back catalogue, the answer is she didn’t. Once you make a song, anyone can cover it as long as they pay royalties. Even you, you thieving shit.
Follow Ryan on Twitter: @RyanBassil
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