Published Tuesday, 22 September 2009
So soon after settling their plagiarism lawsuit with Joe Satriani, Coldplay have been caught up in yet another creative dispute.
According to singer-songwriter Dan Gallagher, there are "striking similarities" between the music video for his song, Something Else, and theirs, for Strawberry Swing.
While Coldplay will breathe a sigh of relief it is the video, not the music under scrutiny, it is far easier to compare two gimmicky video clips than two songs' subtle chord structures
And as Gallagher pointed out in a statement, there's no doubt that his and Coldplay's music videos offer "an awful lot of similarities". Or rather, one big similarity: they both show people interacting with animated chalk-boards.
"I think it's unfair that Strawberry Swing will probably be nominated for numerous awards and is being universally acclaimed as groundbreaking, when [Something Else director] Owen Trevor had virtually the same idea at least a year before," Gallagher said.
Of course, whereas Something Else is a low- to mid-budget video using mostly white chalk, brick walls and few props, Coldplay's video is a suitably razzle-dazzle, blockbuster affair, with superheroes, super-villains, costume-changes and a vivid interplanetary finale. Also: giant squirrels.
Unlike Satriani (and Yusuf Islam), Gallagher concedes that Coldplay probably never saw his video.
"I can't say they copied me," he admitted. But when he wrote to the band's management, their glib response was not quite a denial. "I'm afraid the creative on the video was written by [production company] Shynola, not Coldplay," their reps reportedly replied.
Shynola, who have created music videos for Blur, Beck and Radiohead, have not commented on the alleged similarities.