“23“, a bonus track from ‘The Producers‘ included on the physical CD purchase of IU‘s latest album, “Chat-Shire“, has come under fire for allegedly illegally sampling Britney Spears‘ song, “Gimme More“.

Britney’s voice saying “keep on rocking” can be heard in IU’s song. This is an issue because the song does not credit Britney Spears and it is unclear whether there was any permission given concerning sampling the track.

Loen Entertainment stated that the composer who arranged the song used the sample from a group of purchased vocal samples and they are working on resolving the issue.

The singer’s agency, Loen Entertainment, responded to the accusations on November 3 and stated, ” We became aware of [this issue] over the weekend. We have confirmed that the composer who arranged the song used a sample from voice samples he purchased in the past. They were unsure of the origins of the voice sample, so we have contacted Britney Spears’ agency to confirm whether or not it is her voice.” Her agency continued, “We plan on discussing the matter and resolving it after we find out the truth. We will notify you after we find out the results.” They then apologized saying, “We want to apologize for not being meticulous during the album creation process and for worrying fans. We want to thank and apologize to the fans of Britney Spears who brought this to our attention.”

Personally, I have no idea if this constitutes illegal usage or if the track itself is plagiarism, and I’d default to people like KPOPALYPSE on that front. Maybe it was used illegally, maybe it was a legally purchased sample, who knows? Not me, that’s for sure.

What made me interested in this story though is that I think the netizen response seems to indicate they’re getting this track confused with her title track, also named “Twenty-Three“. See, the primary response seems to be along the lines of “lololol if Loen are putting this on the composer then why are they media playing that IU composed”, which seems to suggest they are either complete morons or they’re just confused by the similar titles.

So I’m giving the netizens the benefit of the doubt here (I know) and assuming they just got the songs mixed up, because otherwise the explanation is rather simple: IU did have a hand in the composition of one song but not in the other, so the response by Loen makes complete sense.

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IU has a partial composing credit on her title track, “Twenty-Three”, but on the OST track from ‘The Producers’, “23”, she had nothing to do with the composition, just the lyrics.

Thus, I don’t see how this is Loen shielding her from criticism. It’s Loen asking the people who actually composed the track about their own composition, which only makes sense, as asking IU about what two other people did would be dumb as hell since all she did was sing it for her drama.

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Anyway, definitely if any of the songs IU composed were plagiarized, she should be taken to court by the copyright owners and dragged or whatever, but as of now, the only track involved in this controversy was composed by people who are not IU, so I’m going out on a limb here and saying she wasn’t behind this with a nefarious SLY FOX plan.

I don’t really think any of this is that complicated to understand, and yet here we are.

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