REVOLVER:THERE'S A lot hanging on Leona Lewis's new single. Collide, due out on September 1st, is the first single from her new album.
Its an important album for the X Factorsinger as she finally tries to convince us that there is more to her than Bleeding Love-style power ballads.
Say what you like about Lewis's music but she is one of the very few reality TV singers to sustain a career for more than three hours and her huge global sales have propelled her into the Sunday TimesRich List.
There was, however, one big problem with the huge marketing campaign planned for the release of Collide. A Swedish dance music producer called Avicii said he was going to the British high court to get an injunction to stop Lewis releasing the song. Avicii was arguing that substantial parts of Collidewere taken from his Fade Into Darknesssong.
It’s very, very difficult to get the British high court to injunct a song but Avicii obviously had good legal advice and was all set to press ahead. If he had been successful, the whole campaign for the Lewis album (predicted to be one of this year’s mega-sellers) would have been seriously disrupted, an awful lot of paid-for-up-front advertising would have had to be jettisoned, and release schedules torn up.
Nasty words aplenty were thrown between the Lewis and Avicii camps as the court case drew nearer, but, in a remarkable about-turn, this week the two are now new best friends and Collidewill be released as planned. Nobody is fessing up about what type of out-of-court settlement was reached but it will be interesting to see what the songwriter credits are on the song.
When it comes to a big hit, who did what, wrote what and legally owns what is not just an issue of intellectual copyright and fair play but potentially of millions of pounds. Next month, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moongets the super-deluxe re-issue treatment and a woman called Clare Torry will be most happy to hear this. If you were one of the multi-millions who bought Dark Sidebefore 2005 (and it's one of the biggest selling albums of all time), your copy will show that the song Great Gig In The Skyis credited to the band's keyboardist Richard Wright.
But all copies pressed after 2005 have the credits as Richard Wright/ClareTorry. This is one of the most lucrative song-writing credit changes ever. Torry is the session singer who was brought in to sing over Great Gig In The Sky. Just 22 at the time and only really known for the odd cover version, she was thrilled to get the Sunday rate for her time in the studio – a total of £30.
It took Torry 31 years to realise that her unique contribution to the album (which she hated at the time) constituted a co-write. She never thought of her input as such during all that time because, as she remembered it, “I just went in, put the headphones on and started going ‘Ooh-aaah baby baby – yeah, yeah, yeah’ but they (the band) said ‘No, try some longer notes’ so I started doing that a bit”. But the key thing here is that by coming up with her own vocal melody line (even under direction from the band) she became the song’s rightful co-writer.
She sued for royalties in 2004 and a settlement was reached. We’ll never know how much she got but as someone who knows about these things once advised me: “think of a very large amount of money and then multiply it by 100”.
The new Leona Lewis album will not sell anywhere near as many copies as Dark Side Of The Moonbut even having a co-write credit on one of its songs (as I suspect Avicci will have) means enough money to go from threatening a high court injunction to hugs and kisses in the space of 24 hours.
MIXED BAG
Oasissplit up long ago but are still fighting about who said what to whom in a Paris dressing room over two years ago. At this stage somebody needs to produce the Britpop version of the Zapruder film.
Whoare The Wanted and why are they number one in the Irish singles charts this week?
