A week after the Canadian singer-songwriter Jason ‘Chilly Gonzales’ Beck recommended that singer Feist take Irishman Hozier to court for plagiarising her music, a potential defamation case has been resolved, with the Irish musician saying “There are no hard feelings on my part.”
Writing on his Facebook account, Hozier, the stage name of Wicklow man Andrew Hozier-Byrne, said that the Gonzales had retracted the statement made in a YouTube video for the German radio channel 1Live, in which he alluded to the similarities between Hozier’s breakthrough hit Take me to Church and Feist’s How Come you Never go to There.
After playing chords from both songs, Gonzales quipped “I'm being told by the research staff that Feist's track came out well over a year before Hozier's. Doesn't look so good does it? Take me to Church? Maybe Feist should take him to court.”
Canadian singer-songwiter Chilly Gonzales in his Pop Music Masterclass web series [YouTube]
Over the weekend, The Sunday Times reported that the Irish singer had launched a defamation case against Gonzales, having filed his complaint in the Dublin courts, with the singer’s manager Caroline Downey describing the allegations as “groundless.”
The video was pulled from YouTube, with the world's largest video-sharing site informing viewers that the Pop Music Masterclass short is currently unavailable due to an "unspecified rights question."
The offending video as it currently plays on YouTube
Taking to Facebook, Gonzales issued an apology to Hozier for any claim of copyright infringement:
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I would like to fully retract any and all implication of copyright infringement in last week’s Pop Music Masterclass “Take Me To Church” and sincerely apologize to Hozier whose work I respect. Chilly Gonzales
Posted by Chilly Gonzales on Monday, 5 October 2015
Hozier replied with his own statement, claiming that he would no longer pursue a legal action against Gonzales.
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There has been some talk in the press of legal action and I'd like to clarify my position and the goings-on of the past...
Posted by Hozier on Monday, 5 October 2015
