Producer Mark Ronson has just weighed in on the ongoing war between Lady Gaga and The Chainsmokers. Meanwhile, Ronson himself is under attack by a group that claims he plagiarized his massive hit collaboration with Bruno Mars, "Uptown Funk," the second such accusation this year.
Lady Gaga Vs. Chainsmokers: Enter Mark Ronson
We've been telling you about the ongoing Twitter war (link1) between pop singer Lady Gaga and EDM duo The Chainsmokers. It all started when The Chainsmokers Drew Taggart stated that Gaga's new single "Perfect Illusion," "sucks" in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. After Gaga playfully responded via Twitter that perhaps the duo will like her new song "A-YO" better, The Chainsmokers replied "Respect" to the pop star, and the short beef was considered over.
That is, until Taggart renewed the bad blood in a recent BBC interview in which he backtracked on the respect by stating that Gaga's Twitter response was a ruse to market her new song, which he also somehow interpreted as a disguised diss of the duo in its entirety.
Now, Gaga's producer Mark Ronson has joined the fray by weighing in with his two cents on Twitter as well.
"Back to being the charisma-bypassed champions of 2 bar Ableton loops? Well, smash it while it lasts, fellas!!" Ronson just tweeted, managing to criticize both The Chainsmokers production style and personalities in one sentence, and question their potential longevity in the other. Chances are Ronson hasn't stated the last words in this beef, and we'll keep you posted on any new developments.
"Uptown Funk" Plagiarism Lawsuit
Meanwhile, Ronson himself came under attack for his own production style via a plagiarism complaint filed by 80s electro funk group Collage. The group complained that Ronson and his collaborators lifted elements of their 1983 song "Young Girls" in "Uptown Funk," his 2014 smash hit with Bruno Mars.
"Many of the main instrumental attributes and themes of 'Uptown Funk' are deliberately and clearly copied from 'Young Girls,' including, but not limited to, the distinct funky specifically noted and timed consistent guitar riffs present throughout the compositions, virtually if not identical bass notes and sequence, rhythm, structure, crescendo of horns and synthesizers rendering the compositions almost indistinguishable if played over each other and strikingly similar if played in consecutively," states the lawsuit.
It's not the first accusation of plagiarism leveled against the team that created "Uptown Funk." Last year, legendary funk group The Gap Band received songwriting credits on the track after they claimed it incorporated elements of the group's smash 1979 hit "Oops Upside Your Head." Then, early in 2016, another group from the electro funk era of music that Ronson and Mars have cited as greatly influencing their work, The Sequence, complained that the two had copied elements of their tune "Funk You Up," also from 1979, although no lawsuit was filed.
You can compare "Uptown Funk" and "Young Girls" in the clips below. Do you think Ronson and Mars are guilty of plagiarism? Let us know in the comments below.
