10 Songs That Led To Massive Lawsuits

The song that announced Radiohead as the new band in town for anyone in the middle of a Venn diagram with depressed and good taste on either side, 'Creep' was the band's first single.

It features Thom Yorke wailing about being a loner and professing his love to a girl who doesn't notice when he's around. Two people that did notice the arrival of Yorke and Radiohead were Albert Hammond and Mike Hazelwood. They were the songwriting team behind 'The Air That I Breathe', a 1973 hit for The Hollies, and they noticed that the chord progression and melody of their song was similar to that of 'Creep'. As sure as loners follow Radiohead on tour, a lawsuit followed this discovery.

What transpired sounds pleasant enough, as lawsuits go. Hammond and Hazelwood won but only took a share of the song's royalties because they were so honest about everything. Hammond said: "I only own the writer's end. The publisher of the song, Rondor Music, felt [Creep] was a steal from The Air That I Breathe, and he sued Radiohead and they agreed. Because they were honest, they weren't sued to the point of saying 'we want the whole thing'. So we ended up just getting a little piece of it." What constitutes a 'little piece' in this instance is unknown.

Radiohead got to sit on the other side of the lawsuit table when they sued Lana Del Rey over her song 'Get Free', claiming that it was extremely similar to 'Creep'. Only a die-hard Del Rey fan would say otherwise, it's pretty blatant. Del Rey offered 40 per cent of the royalties but Radiohead allegedly wanted all the royalties. Del Rey told fans that suit was over during a concert in 2018 before performing the song. We wonder who's in line to be sued by Lana.