♪ OPINION According to the rankings of the country's main audio platform, Ana Castela is the most listened to artist in Brazil in 2023, ending the year with a headache.
Composition released by the singer in the audiovisual album International flock (2023), Forced single is music attributed to Ana Castela, Raphael Soares, Rodolfo Alessi, Mateus Félix, Vinicius Poeta, Léo Souzza and Benicio Neto.
Kastelan sees similarities between the melodies of Forced single It is Right side of the bed (2020), a ballad he composed in collaboration with Dant and released three years ago.
Strictly speaking, only musicologists and specialist experts will be able to certify in court whether there are actually melodic similarities between the two songs, even to the point of plagiarism.
Outside the legal sphere, the question arises as to what the concept of plagiarism is in a pop universe in which everything seems to have been heard before. Currently, the songs most of them sound like déjà vu as soon as they are released.
Brazilian music production in the 2020s is increasingly oriented towards an industrial line determined by successful formulas and recipes. This generic production mainly serves the country universe and mainstream genres such as funk, forró and pagoda.
It used to be easy to recognize a composer's DNA when listening to a song. There is a clear handwriting in the songbooks of Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Djavan, Joyce Moreno, Adriana Calcanhotto, Vanessa da Mata… to name just six names who have created works outside the formula.
Truly original composers are rare these days. As exceptions to the rule we can mention Tim Bernardes, Marília Mendonça (1995 2021) and a few other names. And the imperative rule in the market is to make music for immediate consumption, with the same language, with similar beats and sounds.
It is obvious that this does not detract from Luan Kastelan's reason when a real similarity of the ballad's melody is proven in court On the right side of the bed with that of Forced single.
Plagiarism is plagiarism and must be punished if committed conscientiously. However, it is worth remembering that in the pop universe, the old maxim of the presenter José Abelardo Barbosa de Medeiros (19171988) Chacrinha, who declared: “Nothing is created, everything is copied,” seems to be increasingly valid.
The copy in this case is the result of exhaustively used formulas. In any case, may every accusation of plagiarism always be met with justice!