Elvis Costello: "Ludicrous" to Sue Olivia Rodrigo over Musical Allusion
In a wide-ranging interview, Elvis Costello opens up about social media self-righteousness, why he didn’t sue Olivia Rodrigo for that “Brutal” riff, and creating ‘King of America & Other Realms.’ https://t.co/5F02JmA9uo
- VANITY FAIR (@VanityFair) October 24, 2024
Elvis Costello sat down with Vanity Fair to talk about a range of things (his career, relationship with American music, personal life, etc) as his 6-CD set King of America & Other Realms is soon to be released, and Olivia Rodrigo came up.
In the past, her song "Brutal" has been compared to Costello's "Pump It Up" to which Costello in 2021 said, "It's how rock and roll works" while also acknowledging that his song was influenced by Bob Dylan and Chuck Berry.
While asked about his legacy in this new interview, Costello said, "The odd thing to say is, very few of my songs are performed by other people. By far the most successful and ubiquitous music music to other performers that I've been involved in writing is The Juliet Letters... Not so many people are playing-- other than maybe "Pump It Up." And then mostly not playing it but alluding to it in their own arrangements. Like Olivia Rodrigo's producer obviously did. Now, I did not find any reason to go after them legally for that, because I think it would be ludicrous. It's a shared language of music. Other people clearly felt differently about other songs on that record. But if there were no quotations, there'd be no Bach. There'd be no Mozart. There'd be no Sonny Rollins. So we can't start worrying about that.
That's the way it works. One thing leads to another. That's all I've ever been saying. What I'm still saying."
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