Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Because it’s K-pop, we have another plagiarism accusation that’s gaining steam, this time TWICE‘s “Someone Like Me” being accused of copying Hailee Stanfield‘s “Starving“.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tvHK7KzE4ZM
It’s worth addressing because JYP Entertainment has found it worth addressing.
JYP Entertainment stated on May 16, “We’re currently checking with the producer of ‘Starving’. We will make an announcement after confirmation.”
I’ll leave absolute judgments on this kind of thing to those who understand it better (like Kpopalypse), but the only similarity I hear between the two songs is the guitar riff, which itself boils down to two chords on repeat. Maybe because it’s so prominent it might be more of a problem than what it seems like, but in general if we’re going to claim plagiarism for every song that uses two chords similarly, it’s seriously endless. Especially true for tracks that lean on the guitar, since so many of them sound the same anyway (which is what makes them generally uninteresting to me).
Don’t get me wrong, “Someone Like Me” surely sounds similar to “Starving”, but as we’ve been over many times, soundalikes are not plagiarism. If it was, you’d have a basically never ending series of lawsuits being won. So while we should wait this out since JYPE is getting feedback, like with most K-pop plagiarism controversies, count me as skeptical.
