Canberra trio SAFIA say they are “ready to move on” with their lives after accusing pop star Ariana Grande of copying ideas from their You Are The One music video on Monday.
Despite the obvious similarities between the You Are The One video and Grande’s big-budget clip for One Last Time, the SAFIA boys have said the similarities may have been coincidence — a sentiment which was expressed yesterday by Grande’s video director Max Landis.
Taking to Facebook this morning, SAFIA have thanked fans for their passion, and said they were simply voicing concerns over use of their art.
“Hey guys, its been a really weird 72 hours and things have escalated very quickly regarding the Ariana Grande video situation,” the group said.
“Firstly, we want to thank all of our fans and friends for caring enough about our work and pointing the similarities out to us. We love that you are as passionate as we are about originality and creativity. That being said, while we do find an uncanny similarity in certain parts of the two clips, there’s no way of ever proving whether Ariana’s clip was influenced by ‘You Are The One’ and it genuinely may have just been a coincidence.
“We’re not after Ariana, Max or their label either we were simply voicing our concerns in what is sometimes a common occurrence in the music industry.
“We feel it’s important to stand up for our work which we spend so much of our lives devoted to, but we’re ready to move on from this. This is not how we want our name to reach the masses, if you hear about us we want it to be because of our music and not because of a ‘scandal’.”
Still no word from SAFIA on the similarities between their clip and that of Perth band Injured Ninja, for their song Fallopian Tube Screamer. The director of the You Are The One video, Jimmy Ennett, yesterday told Music Feeds he “genuinely never saw” Injured Ninja’s clip before making SAFIA’s video, but if he had he “would have changed choices so I was sure that wasn’t something that people would see”.
Watch: Ariana Grande – One Last Time
Watch: SAFIA – You Are The One
