Just when a somewhat sketchy story about a musician piling on the “Coldplay plagiarized” bandwagon was starting to gain traction, Shynola, the team behind the awesome “Strawberry Swing” video in question have released probably the coolest plagiarism rebuttal I’ve ever seen.
Here’s a recap of what happened previously: Andy J. Gallagher, a UK-based musician, released a statement implying that Coldplay’s team had borrowed from his “Something Else” video and were receiving undue acclaim for their work. “I think it’s unfair that ‘Strawberry Swing’ will probably be nominated for numerous awards and is being universally-acclaimed as groundbreaking, when (director) Owen Trevor had virtually the same idea at least a year before,” Gallagher said, adding, “while I can’t say they copied me, there are an awful lot of similarities…”
Well, Shynola have now posted a .pdf file in response to the controversy, which details all the actual influences behind their work and insists that they have never even seen Gallagher’s video.
Click here to read their rebuttal, complete with scans from the works they actually drew from: The Simpsons, Felix the Cat, Superman, Donkey Kong, Windsor McCay, Looney Tunes, and more. They also found another YouTube that predates both videos and has a lot of striking “similarities” to Gallagher’s video as well.
Basically, he got pwned. Seriously, check it out.