Crayon Pop was hit with plagiarism accusations upon netizens noticing the similarities between "Lonely Christmas" and the opening theme song for the Japanese anime series, 'Lupin the Third'.
The composer Kim Yu Min behind "Lonely Christmas" denied the accusations, explaining in detail with some music theory as to how the two songs are different and that the songs sound similar because they fall into the same bebop jazz genre.
He also claimed that he's never heard of the song in question as he shared through his Facebook, "'Lonely Christmas' is an innocently-made piece of work without any reference used... If I intended to copy the intro of 'Lupin the Third', unless I'm a fool, I wouldn't have made the similarities so noticeable. It's because I've never heard of the 'Lupin the Third' song that the result of the intro for 'Lonely Christmas' was due to the similar genre of music."
"The reason why the two songs' intros sound similar is because they both are of a bebop genre with a brass pattern subdivided into sixteenth note beats and an off-beat rhythm. In the case of bebop, the flow of the start of the song gives it anticipation, and one can say that the intro for 'Lonely Christmas' and 'Lupin the Third' falls into the same category... But the two songs' intro is different in tune and beat after the 1st 16-beat measure... In terms of scale degrees, 'Lonely Christmas' is also 1st-7th-4th-5th/1st-5th-7th-1st/ while 'Lupin the Third' is /1st-3rd-7th-1st/1st-3rd-4th-1st/..."
Chrome Entertainment also assured fans that the controversy won't affect Crayon Pop's comeback activities, stating, "[Crayon Pop] will kick off their comeback stages this week beginning on the 4th as scheduled."
What do you think? You can compare the openings in the video below.
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