Last month, while appearing at this year’s MTV Europe Music Awards, Doja Cat performed a heavy rendition of her 2019 hit ‘Say So’. The performance caught the ears of Australian guitarist Plini Roessler-Holgate, who releases music mononymously as Plini, after fans noticed that Doja’s rendition included a guitar solo that heavily borrowed from Roessler-Holgate’s 2016 song ‘Handmade Cities’, without permission.
“I think it’s an awesome performance… and more than anything, find it absolutely hilarious that something I wrote 4 years ago in my bedroom would find its way here,” Roessler-Holgate wrote on social media at the time.
“The lack of prior communication about it or proper credit upon release is disappointing but not particularly surprising in a sector of the industry that is usually more interested in clout than creativity. (It’s being sorted now, but would have been cooler a million views ago).”
Now, in a new interview with MusicRadar around latest album Impulse Voices, the guitarist also discussed the Doja Cat incident, saying she personally apologised to him after learning what had happened.
“The best part of all this is that I woke up one day with a string of voice messages from her in my DMs, saying sorry and that she wished she’d known about all of this and wished they could have credited me properly, and also praising my song and thanking me for being nice about it.”
“I thought about that and realised it was the number one strangest thing that’s happened to me in my career. One of the biggest pop stars is messaging me an apology because someone kinda ripped my music for her live performance.”
Overall, the guitarist was pretty easygoing about the whole thing, saying as far as he’s concerned it’s a great story.
