Does This New Apple Commercial Rip Off Shamir?

Scott Dudelson/Getty

Does This New Apple Commercial Rip Off Shamir?

Scott Dudelson/Getty

This week, at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, the company previewed its new iOS 10 mobile operating system with a short video. That video is soundtracked by a song called “Hey Hi Hello,” which, as Pitchfork points out, sounds suspiciously like Shamir’s “On The Regular.” Even more suspiciously, Shamir has appeared in previous commercials for Apple Music, so they are presumably familiar with his work. Compare the two songs below:

Hollywood Wildlife, the band behind “Hey Hi Hello,” released one digital album last month but have virtually no online presence. The group is made up of industry pros Blake Healy, Fran Hall, and Doug Brown, an arranged marriage set up by Sony/ATV to create music for marketing. When asked by Pitchfork, Healy says he can’t remember exactly how they came up with “Hey Hi Hello.” “When we were working on the song — who was it? — ‘Uptown Funk’ was popular then,” he says. “Kind of the bassline and maybe the beat is a little bit from that type of style.” When asked if he has heard “On the Regular”: “I have heard that song. I think that song’s awesome.” When told of suggestions that “Hey Hi Hello” might be derived from “On The Regular”: “I don’t know. Hopefully that’s a good thing. I think it’s a good thing. I think that stuff is so cool and fun. When I heard his song, I was like, ‘Who did this, and how did people find it?'”

Singer-songwriter Troye Sivan tweeted a link to the video at Shamir, asking if he had “legal representation,” and Shamir retweeted it. Other than that, he has made no official comment.

When contacted by Pitchfork, Shamir’s team responded only with the following edit of an existing Apple billboard, referencing the Crying Jordan meme:

Shamir

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