Beijing Olympic Song Suspiciously Similar To 'Frozen'

[summer]

NY Times

BEIJING — China lacks enough snow for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, environmentalists said. China is too repressive to hold the Games, detaining hundreds of lawyers just in the past month, rights campaigners said. On Friday, despite those complaints, the International Olympic Committee awarded the Games to Beijing.



Now some people are drawing attention to what may be a third early problem, one that could entangle China in a dispute with the Walt Disney Company or at least attract ridicule. An official song of the Games, “The Snow and Ice Dance,” they asserted, is suspiciously similar to “Let It Go,” the wildly popular ballad sung by Idina Menzel in the Disney animated film “Frozen.”



On the YouTube page for “The Snow and Ice Dance,” one of 10 official songs of the Games, many of the comments were in Chinese, although it was not clear how many of them came from the mainland, where an official ban on the site makes access difficult. A number of commenters struck a surprised or sarcastic note:

“I nearly sang ‘Let it Go!’ ” wrote Zeta Fera.



“Rubbish country,” wrote leckylecky. “Only understands how to copy copy copy.”



“Their shame knows no bounds,” wrote Ben Wang.



Caijing Online, the website of a prominent Chinese business magazine, also noted the similarities, and offered a technical analysis that went beyond the melodic parallels. Among the main points: Both songs employ a piano as the major instrument, have similar prelude chords and an eight-beat introduction, and they run at almost exactly the same tempo.



That article also inspired online comments. A reader named Tujiang Elapse said parts of the song were similar, but not all, whereas another reader, Moxin, lamented that China did not lack creative people, so why had it copied the song?



Asked to comment, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Games’ organizing committee, Xiao Junfeng, requested that questions be submitted by fax, saying that she could not comment without authorization, which she did not have. She did not immediately respond to the faxed questions.



David J. Jefferson, vice president for corporate communications at Disney in Studio City, Calif., did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



Accusations of plagiarism and other forms of intellectual property theft are not new in China, where the legal concepts of trademarks and copyrights are not rigorously enforced and remain a source of tension between China and the United States.



Just last month a dispute erupted over a Chinese animated film, “The Autobots,” in which the characters look remarkably like those in “Cars,” produced by Disney’s Pixar Animation Studios. Viewers called “The Autobots” a shameless copy, but the film’s director said he had never even seen “Cars.”



The first of the 10 songs presented on the organizing committee’s website is performed by the actor Jackie Chan and titled “Waking Up the Winter” — perhaps wishful thinking in a city where snow barely fell last year.



Second is “Come and Ski on the Great Wall,” performed by the male duo Lu Han and Tao Zhe.



“The Snow and Ice Dance” is third, sung by the male-female duo Sun Nan and Tan Jing.



Temperatures in northern China typically drop below freezing in winter, but the region is dry, meaning that much of the snow and ice at the Games will almost certainly have to be artificial.

[pamela]

I feel sorry for great athletes these days who have this to look forward to. I'd say the U.S. Should boycott until the IOC has its act together, but athletes have such a short window of opportunity to compete, it's a hard call.

[IIOY]

China copying something? I refuse to believe!

ETA: I'm listening to the song now. It's embarrassing how shamelessly it rips Let It Go. Did the writers think no one would notice?

[summer]

Aug 5, 2015 7:21:34 GMT -5 pamela said:

I feel sorry for great athletes these days who have this to look forward to. I'd say the U.S. Should boycott until the IOC has its act together, but athletes have such a short window of opportunity to compete, it's a hard call.

This is me. I mean in Brazil they will be swimming in sewage! We can't do better for our best athletes?

[elleblue]

The beginning is very "Let it Go"-ish, but once you get to the main body of the song, not so much. Still bizarre in many respects, especially because it's not like this is a last minute thing.

As an aside, does it strike anyone else as odd that they have the song ready to go, nearly seven years early?

[josieposy]

There's no way most people are going to hear that and not think Let It Go.

[Deleted]

Disney vs. China should be an interesting match-up.

[meshaliuknits]

Aug 5, 2015 7:26:13 GMT -5 IIOY said:

China copying something? I refuse to believe!

ETA: I'm listening to the song now. It's embarrassing how shamelessly it rips Let It Go. Did the writers think no one would notice?

TBF Let it Go has probably been stuck in the songwriters head for the last year.