Thomas Gustafsson—the Swedish composer and songwriter known as Thomas G:son—has written 58 songs that have competed in national Eurovision selections from Denmark to Romania. It’s probably tough not to repeat yourself when you’re spitting out that volume of music. Apparently it’s tough not to repeat other people, too….
Gloria, a Wiwi reader in Belgium, contacted us after reading our post “Does Loreen’s ‘Euphoria’ Remind you of Dunja’s ‘Euforija.’” Her answer was yes. “Euphoria,” which G:Son also wrote, and which won Eurovision this year, has strong similarities with Dunja’s song of the same name (minus Dunja’s Serbian accent). But Gloria wanted to remind us of two other of G:son’s songs which sound oddly similar to songs that came before them.
First, G:Son’s “Listen to Your Heartbeat,” which competed at Eurovision 2001, may remind you of the song that represented Belgium in 1996. In fact, a judge actually ordered G:Son to pay the Belgian songwriter royalties after-the-fact. Let’s compare:
Belgium’s Lisa del Bo sings “Liefde is een kaartspel” at Eurovision 1996:
Sweden’s Friends sing Thomas G:son’s “Listen to Your Heartbeat” at Eurovision 2001:
And who can forget the scandal involving Danny Saucedo at Sweden’s national final last year? “In the Club” sounds like an English-language translation of “En El Club.” We’re not saying any of this is deliberate—sometimes things enter your brain and you can’t figure out from where. But it’s unfortunate to say the least.
“En El Club” by Myla Vox, a boy band from Nicaragua:
Danny Saucedo sings Thomas G:Son’s “In the Club” at Melodifestivalen 2011:
For an established artist like G:Son, the explanation isn’t that he copied. The answer is simply that there’s a lot of music produced every single day across the world. There will inevitably be similarities between songs. YouTube just makes them easier to identify.
Wiwi Bloggs, You simply can’t just blame Thomas G:Son every time he composes a song for a Eurovision participant, regardless of which country it is. Nowadays it’s very, very hard to come up with a song that others will wonder “Why didn’t I think of that?” without being accused of plagiarism. Thomas G:Son is a very good example of a composer that is very familiar with Eurovision and he seriously knows what he’s doing, although there’s no guarantee he’ll deliver Eurovision glory, up until he finally cracked it for Loreen with “Euphoria”. The UK sadly don’t have a composer like… Read more »
Wiwi – I agree. With the quantity of music created, you will soon be able to find and sequence of notes that are pleasant somewhere in some song.
For lisa del bo, i know i an official plagiarism but look like an abba song too, so del bo is a plagiarism of abba ?
But really i prefer the Gson versions,
But it is like that with music these days. Denmarks, Serbias and Norways songs were also accused of plagiarism this year. Maybe not from experts, but on YouTube there were many comments on this subject. If there are no rules or scrutinizing regarding plagiarism before the a song gets accepted to the competition I think it is about time they implement that. For example I do not think a swedish songwriter has that much interest of a boyband in Nicaragua to be honest, if they are not super famous. It does not help that more and more songs are written… Read more »