Copying the story of a movie, plagiarising it scene by scene, being ‘inspired’ by other musical compositions… this is not exactly unheard of in Bollywood. The Hindi film industry has a long and distinguished history of copying from Hollywood and from any foreign language film that happened to catch the fancy – our filmmakers and music directors are not at all discriminatory that way. So when an Indian music composer accused someone of lifting his tune, one wondered if this was valid claim and then wondered if this was some form of divine justice.
Mithoon is a composer, singer and lyricist well known for composing the music of Ashiqui 2, Ek Villain, Shivaay, and many other movies as lead or guest composer. He is best known for his composition Tum Hi Ho, which he says American singer- rapper T-Pain has copied in his song That's Yo Money.
In response to the copying /plagiarism charge leveled against T-Pain, the tweet with which he shared his new song That's Yo Money has been withheld.
T-Pain’s response to this was that he was “dragged by brown twitter” and that he did not produce the song. He apparently got the beat from a producer and had no idea that it wasn’t original.
Numerous people came out in support of Mithoon, corroborating his statement about his song being lifted. After all Tum hi Ho was a huge hit and is still loved by millions.
Americans are famous for having very little awareness of occurrences and culture beyond their shores. T-Pain’s ignorance and dismissive tweet about ‘brown twitter’ raised a lot of hackles including those of Mohit Suri, director of Ashiqui 2.
One tweet suggested an alternative name for T-Pain’s track. That's Yo Beat or That’s Yo Song would have been more appropriate titles for the track.
Several tweets expressed admiration for Mithoon’s respectful and restrained tweet about what is essentially a copyright infringement.
Several Indian music directors are shameless lifters. Pritam is one of the worst offenders, points out this tweet.
Well it’s certainly new! While Bollywood is used to lifting the creative work of others, not too many copy from Bollywood. Perhaps turnabout is fair play? Or maybe we should just be thankful that T-Pain isn’t claiming that he was ‘inspired’!
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