Robbie Williams Defends Olivia Rodrigo's Christmas Song, and His 14-Year-Old Daughter Calls It Clout Chasing
British singer Robbie Williams, 52, posted a long message on Instagram on November 11 recounting a video call with his 14-year-old daughter, Teddy. After his posts about a song dispute drew speculation online, he explained to his daughter that he was not beefing with Olivia Rodrigo. She listened, then told him what he was doing was clout chasing. Williams wrote the exchange into the post and joked that, by her assessment, it was probably the most successful piece of clout chasing he had done in years. Two days earlier, on November 9, he had already defended Rodrigo in a post, saying claims that her new Christmas song copied his 2012 song "Candy" did not hold up, that he could not care less and that he would not pursue the matter.
The dispute began with Rodrigo's first Christmas single, "take me home (4 christmas)." According to Far Out, the song, released on November 6, drew praise, but some listeners pointed to melodic similarities with Williams' 2012 hit "Candy" and with "Christmas Wrapping," The Waitresses' 1981 festive song. Chris Butler, who wrote "Christmas Wrapping," previously told Variety that Rodrigo had emailed him about two months earlier and invited him to hear the song early; he said it was great and going to be a smash, and that he would not go after her. Rodrigo herself had not publicly responded to the discussion as of November 11, and Tyla said it had contacted her representative for comment.
Williams said his management had told him there was chatter online about similarities between one of his songs and one of Rodrigo's, so on November 7 he posted a single line on X, "Happy Christmas @oliviarodrigo x," intending a bit of gentle mischief to stir online debate. Fans could not tell whether it was a call-out, a joke or a defense. On November 9 he set out his position in a long Instagram post: some claims of songs sounding alike he could understand, some were justified, but most, he wrote, were nonsense, because there are only so many notes and chords, and only so many ways of putting them together before a writer inevitably lands somewhere somebody else has been. He wrote that he loves Rodrigo and that, to him, she may have accidentally stumbled across a musical echo of his in one of her new songs, and he could not care less. Protecting a work, he added, is different from treating every vaguely familiar sequence of notes as a winning lottery ticket, and he called that kind of pursuit ambulance chasing and disgusting.
The November 11 post then told his daughter's side. On the video call, Williams told Teddy that the internet was saying part of Rodrigo's new song sounded like one of Daddy's. Teddy immediately picked up another device and started searching, then asked, visibly distressed, why he was beefing with Olivia Rodrigo. Williams explained that there was no beef and there had never been any beef, and that a complimentary post about Rodrigo would go up the next day. Teddy went quiet, then said she knew what he was doing, and Olivia would know too. When he asked what he was doing, she answered: clout chasing.
Williams turned the moment on himself in the post: his firstborn, the child he had loved and spent fourteen years trying to impress, had accused him of clout chasing, which suggested Rodrigo had the clout and he was in need of some. He said he had thought they were colleagues, but apparently the roles had changed: Olivia makes music, and he chases Olivia. He confirmed the promised post about Rodrigo had gone up, warm, generous and entirely sincere, and joked that, judging by his daughter's assessment of his standing in the music industry, it was probably the most successful piece of clout chasing he had done in years. He signed off to Teddy by noting he was about to play to 50,000 people in a stadium in Melbourne, which he appreciated meant absolutely nothing to her. Fans replied in the comments that teenage daughters have a way of humbling their parents, and praised Teddy for keeping her father grounded.
Source: Robbie Williams
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：Robbie Williams 2024年9月在多伦多国际电影节的资料图（Kevin Payravi 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons），已预裁为16:9、头部完整保留，非本次发帖画面。/ Robbie Williams in a September 2024 file photo at the Toronto International Film Festival (by Kevin Payravi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons), pre-cropped to 16:9 with his head kept whole; not from this post.
