Vietnamese pop singer Tran Thu Ha or Ha Tran, currently living in the U.S., is working with her lawyer to explore the possibility of a plagiarism lawsuit against Rihanna and Coldplay.

Rihanna and Coldplay doubted to plagiarize Vietnamese diva’s music

The possible lawsuit came after their “Princess of China” song in the “Mylo Xyloto” album released on October 17 has been found to bear striking resemblance to her 2008 “Ra ngo tung kinh.”

Ha told Tien Phong newspaper: “If I sue them for plagiarism, it is like an ant fighting against an elephant. However, from my lawyer’s opinion, even if the resemblance is just a coincidence, we still have a case in court if analyses turn up considerable similarity between the two songs.”

According to Ha, the two songs have a similar mood, beats, and musical arrangement in the introduction piece.

Ha said it’s unbelievable that Coldplay have listened to her song. She ventured a hypothesis that the English band could have come across and listened to it on the Internet without really knowing who wrote it.

“I need to be careful if I want to sue someone. They will accuse me of seeking profit if I couldn’t give enough evidence,” she said.

There have also been comments on the resemblance between the vocal background style in her song “Ra ngo tung kinh” and that of African indigenous people’s music.

However, Ha Tran explained that she came up with the vocal style to use in the background music of the song “Ra ngo tung kinh,” which was arranged by local musician Thanh Phuong.

American music website ATRL was the first one to mention the resemblance.

One member shared a post called “Coldplay & Rihanna plagiarizing Vietnam music?” with the two music clips to compare, which has attracted five pages of comments.

Disputable copyright is not new to Coldplay, as the English band was sued by singer Joe Satriani for using a part of his “If I could fly” song for their Grammy-winning “Viva La Vida” in 2009.

In September the same year, they went to court in Los Angeles in the US again when their new music video “Straberry Swing” was claimed to be a copy of the MV “Something Else” released one year earlier by singer Andy J. Gallagher.

Tuoitre