The songwriter for ‘Christmas Wrapping’ has praised Olivia Rodrigo for making a “homage” to the song on her new festive single, while Robbie Williams has spoken about the comparisons to one of his tracks.
Rodrigo dropped ‘Take Me Home (4 Christmas)’ as her first festive single last week, and it arrived with a star-studded music video that saw her team up with Sex And The City‘s Cynthia Nixon and SNL‘s Ben Marshall.
Upon its release, the track immediately drew comparisons to the 1981 track from The Waitresses, ‘Christmas Wrapping’. The band’s songwriter and guitarist Christopher Butler has now shared a post on Facebook addressing the similarities and revealing that the pop star reached out to him ahead of the song being released.
“About two months ago, I received a weird email from someone claiming to be “Olivia Rodrigo”. It was filled w/ Waitresses gush, and just had to be fake,” he wrote. “Said she’d written a Christmas song, and invited me to hear it. I didn’t know who OR was, so I did a deep dig. Wow…what a career.”
He then recalled getting back in touch and praising her songwriting style – although remaining skeptical if the person really was Rodrigo.
“Her song was/is great. It’s going to be a smash, maybe even that elusive Christmas #1 contest they have every year in the UK,” Butler concluded, before sharing further praise on YouTube.
“Thank you all for the comparisons to ‘Christmas Wrapping’. The vibe is there, but no plagiarism—and this is from the guy who wrote ‘CW’,” he wrote in one comment.
“I’m a fan now, and what’s interesting is how many of my demographic (GeezerBoomer) friends love and respect her, too,” he added in another comment. “Her talents, her empowering songs, her recognition of the work of her elders, her activism, and her charity work. BRAVO.”
While there have been lots of comparisons to The Waitresses’ ‘80s hit, some people online have also drawn similarities between ‘Take Me Home (4 Christmas)’ and Robbie Williams’ hit single ‘Candy’.
Williams himself first seemed to hint towards the comparison on X, simply tagging Rodrigo in a post that read “Happy Christmas @oliviarodrigo x”.
He then addressed the situation more directly on Instagram, writing a post saying that he “loves” the pop star and is wary of people being too quick to accuse others of plagiarism.
“There’s something about the music industry that’s been bothering me for a while.
People coming after people because they’ve spotted a similarity between two songs.
Some of it I completely understand… Most of it, I think, is complete bollocks,” he wrote.
“Music has been around for a very long time. We’re all going to bump into each other eventually. Which brings me to Olivia Rodrigo,” he continued. “It sounds to me as though she may have accidentally stumbled across a musical echo of mine in one of her new songs. And do you know what? I couldn’t care less.
“I don’t know whether there’s technically a publishing issue, a copyright issue, or no issue whatsoever. And I don’t want to know. I’m not going after her. Because I think at some point, some fucking sanity has to prevail.”
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Concluding, Williams shared: “there’s a difference between protecting your work and treating every vaguely familiar sequence of notes as a winning lottery ticket. Some of this stuff has become ambulance chasing. And I think it’s disgusting.
“We all stand on the shoulders of people who came before us. Sometimes consciously.
Sometimes without even knowing it. That’s how music works. If we keep punishing people for accidentally arriving somewhere somebody else has already been, eventually we’re going to frighten the creativity out of everyone.”
‘Take Me Home…’ follows on from Rodrigo’s recent ‘Expectations’ remix with Chappell Roan, and her critically acclaimed third studio album ‘You Seem Pretty Sad For A Girl So In Love’. The singer is currently out on the North American leg of her massive ‘Unraveled’ world tour with Wolf Alice. She’ll head to the UK next spring for a huge residency at The O2 in London.
‘Take Me Home (4 Christmas)’ comes on the heels of new Christmas singles from Elton John and CMAT, Kate Nash and Sam Fender. Also marking the festive season is Self Esteem, who is recording the theme song for Channel 4‘s Mog’s Bad Thing festive special.
