Hello World, It's Calexta
Today I'm here to tell you about a bizarre plagiarism scandal. Today in 2014, the "Sadie Hawkins" episode of the musical tv series Glee, first aired, and among the songs covered in that episode was an acoustic cover of the song "Baby Got Back". Originally by Sir Mix-a-Lot, the Glee cover of the song had a bizarre lyrical change, with a character named Adam singing that "Johnny C's in trouble" in place of the original song's "Mix-a-Lot's in trouble".
If you are wondering who "Johnny C" is, it's not the protagonist from Jhonen Vasquez's beloved horror comic series, but instead It's geek rock musician Jonathan Coulton– the actual and uncredited composer of this cover. Best known for writing the songs "Still Alive" and "Want You Gone" for the also beloved Portal video game series, Johnny C knew he was being copied.
JoCo (as the kids call him) made a fuss, but legally, his cover was a parody and he had no legal claim over his rendition. Remarkably officials from Fox, the network Glee aired on publicly stated "they're within their legal rights to do this, and that [Joco] should be happy for the exposure" knowing full well Coulton's only credit on the episode was in the songs lyrics itself, they were selling the cover as their own, and that the only exposure he got from the situation was because of Glee plagiarizing him.
That being said, Jonathan Coulton was not the last artist to claim corporate plagiarism from Glee, and he's been fairly well for himself as a musician. He put out some studio albums, worked on the SpongeBob Musical, and he even has his own nerd cruise. But still Glee sucked ass for that one.
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