Beyoncé shuts down Right Said Fred’s ‘disparaging’ claim she sampled song without permission
Beyoncé accepts the Best R&B Performance award for ‘Black Parade’ onstage during the 63rd Annual GRAMMY Awards. (Kevin Winter/Getty)
Pop icon Beyoncé has refuted claims that she sampled the song I’m Too Sexy from Right Said Fred without permission.
The British pop band, consisting of brothers Fred and Richard Fairbrass, made the claim in a Tuesday (4 October) interview with The Sun after Beyoncé’s seventh album Renaissance topped the charts.
A track on the song, named Alien Superstar, interpolates Right Said Fried’s hit song I’m Too Sexy, which the singers have received a writing credit for.
But the brothers weren’t impressed, saying that the Halo superstar was “arrogant” for allegedly sampling the track without their permission.
“Normally, the artist approaches us, but Beyoncé didn’t, because she is such an arrogant person,” they said. “She just probably thought, ‘Come and get me,’ so we heard about it after the fact.
“But everyone else, Drake and Taylor Swift, the came to us,” they added, referencing Drake’s usage of the song in his 2021 song Way 2 Sexy and Taylor Swift’s with her 2017 single Look What You Made Me Do.
“To use our melody, they need our permission so they send us the demo and we approve it, and if so, we get a co-write credit. With this Beyoncé thing, there are 22 writers. It’s ridiculous.”
In response, a spokesperson for Beyoncé told the Daily Mail that the claims were “erroneous, incredibly disparaging, and false,” alleging that permission was granted by Right Said Fred’s publisher, pointing out the co-writer credit on the track.
“Permission was not only granted for its use, but they publicly spoke of their gratitude for being on the album,” the spokesperson further claimed. “For their song, there was no sound recording use, only the composition was utilised.
“Permission was asked of their publisher on [11 May] 2022 and the publisher approved the use on [15 June] 2022. They were paid for the usage in August 2022. Furthermore, the copyright percentage of the Right Said Fred writers with respect to the use of I’m Too Sexy is a substantial portion of the composition.”
The 1989 duo have been previously lambasted for their anti-mask and anti-lockdown comments during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Fairbrass brothers were criticised by users on social media after posting a picture from Trafalgar Square during an anti-mask protest on 26 September 2020, saying: “There was a really good atmosphere in Trafalgar Sq today.”
“Shall be deleting all your music from my library,” one user said. “I truly hope you lose no one you live in this pandemic – like I have.”
Others spun the lyrics from I’m Too Sexy to condemn their attendance, with lyrics like “I’m too stupid for the facts, won’t use test and track.”
