Beijing Olympics anthem accused of ripping off Frozen’s ‘Let It Go’

The tinkling piano builds up to a crescendo, and just as you expect the singer to reach for the power ballad chorus of Let It Go, the ubiquitous anthem from the Disney film Frozen, instead Chinese singers Sun Nan and Tan Jing belt out the remarkably similar The Snow and Ice Dance.

Internet commentators in China reckon that The Snow and Ice Dance, one of the 10 official tunes used by Beijing as a candidate city for the 2022 Winter Games, is too similar to the song made famous by Idina Menzel's Queen Elsa in Frozen.

The decision to make Beijing the first city to host both the summer and winter Olympics came after President Xi Jinping promised to stage a “fantastic, extraordinary and excellent event” which will be used as a platform to improve the capital’s appalling environmental problems.

But the decision has been criticised overseas, with activists complaining that China has not done enough to improve its human rights record and sports fans complaining that there is not enough snow around Beijing in the winter to hold a winter sports event.

Given the lack of snow in Zhangjiakou and Yanqing, which alongside Beijing will host the 2022 games, perhaps Let it Snow might have been more appropriate as an Olympic song.

"They are very wise, in that they have changed everything they can. However, the music and the rhythm are really similar. You will think it is Let It Go if you take out the voice," wrote Baobao Boey on the Sina Weibo microblog.

The similarities were first pointed out on the website of the business magazine Caijing, but the post was taken down subsequently.

Another online commentator, Wo shi ni, said: “The more I listen to it, the more I feel I’m losing face. Let’s not say it is a copy, but an adaptation instead.”

A mash-up video on YouTube – a service that is banned in China – certainly seems to highlight remarkable similarities by mixing bits of the Disney song with the Winter Olympics anthem.

The attacks on the theme song highlight China’s poor record on copyright protection. While major advances have been made in recent years, piracy remains rampant.

Last month cinemas had to axe the animated movie The Autobots because it looked like a straight rip-off of the Pixar Cars franchise, even though the director claimed to have never seen the film.