Ariana Grande has a hit song with “7 Rings”, and the company that owns the rights to the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalogue is enjoying the sound of her music.
The song “7 Rings” is based largely on “My Favorite Things”, the 1959 song written by Rodgers and Hammerstein for the movie “The Sound of Music”. In it, Ms. Grande sings about some of her favourite things. There are no “raindrops on roses” or “whiskers on kittens”, but, rather, “breakfast at Tiffany’s and bottles of bubbles, girls with tattoos who like getting in trouble”. In the song, Ms. Grande laments (or boasts) that her receipts “be lookin’ like phone numbers”. I doubt that Julie Andrew’s character Maria in “The Sound of Music” ever observed that “Whoever said money can’t solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve ‘em”.
The video for the song had 268,264,254 views as of the time of writing.
According to a story in the New York Times, Concord, a music company that owns the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalogue, is to receive 90% of the song writing royalties. This high percentage is thought to be because of the original song’s iconic status, and the extent to which the new song is based on the original.
Composer Richard Rodgers died in 1979, and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein died in 1960. According to The AM Law Daily, their estates sold Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, which controlled the rights to the complete words of both artists, to Imagem Music Group in 2009 for more than $200 m US.
This is not the first time that modern artists have borrowed from Rodgers and Hammerstein. In 2006, Gwen Stefani sampled from their “Lonely Goatherd” song, also from “The Sound of Music”. There, the song writing duo’s catalogue only received 50% of the royalties.
Have a great weekend.