Skrillex bites back at White Hinterland on Twitter

Earlier this week (25 May), White Hinterland, real name Casey Dienel, filed a lawsuit against Justin Bieber and producer Skrillex over the pair allegedly copying her vocal riff featured in her song Ring the Bell. She claims that the two exploited her work on their hit song Sorry without seeking or obtaining permission to use her work.

However, Skrillex hit back on Twitter yesterday showing exactly how the vocal hook was created. Sorry uses a cappella sample from co-songwriter Julia Michaels which Skrillex then manipulated to form an entirely new vocal sound. Although it sounds somewhat similar to the vocal used at the beginning of White Hinterland’s song, it’s definitely not a sample.

SORRY but we didnt steal this 🙏🏻 @justinbieber @bloodpop pic.twitter.com/9897j9sfY7

— SKRILLEX (@Skrillex) May 27, 2016

One user took to Rolling Stone to write:

“To succeed in this suit, Dienel would have to prove that (1) Julia Michaels knew of Dienel’s song (2) prior to recording her scratch demo vocal on “Sorry,” (3) consciously brought its three-note vocal motif into that vocal, and did those all so that (4) Skrillex could then deliberately transpose it to imitate the sonic effect in “Ring The Bell.” I don’t think that any of those individual elements are provable, let alone all of them, collectively.”

Another user disagreed, writing:

“I don’t believe Skrillex’s explanation as to how he ‘developed’ his sound. The better proof would be to establish that he created the sound prior to the public hearing the music of the copyrighted material of the competing song. If he can prove his sound was created before her song become public then he wins. He will not get damages from her because her song came before Justin Bieber’s song went public. I don’t even believe many of Skrillex’s own riffs come from his spontaneous synthesizer improvising because most composers sample but he alters the sound so it makes it difficult to find out the original source so the possible owners of a sampled source cannot request credit or royalties. Unfortunately for Skrillex he not only wanted the note sequence for a riff he also wanted the original octave level and have it permeate an entire song. That was too greedy and he was called on this. If it is found that another problem in defending the case that intentional deceit was done to hide credit then additional damages may be requested.”

It’s a tricky one but in this instance, we're saying innocent until proven guilty.