Photo Credit: Beyonce/Instagram; Right Said Fred/Instagram
Beyonce is a little over 2 months into her new album Renaissance being out and as expected, it hasn’t come without controversy. The 90s pop duo Right Said Fred has accused her of being arrogant for taking their hit I’m Too Sexy and sampling it without their permission for her song Alien Superstar. The brothers whose real names are Fred and Richard Fairbrass told The Sun this week at the 2022 BMI Awards, “Normally the artist approaches us but Beyoncé didn’t because she is such an arrogant person she just had probably thought ‘come and get me’ so we heard about it after the fact when you did. But everyone else, Drake and Taylor Swift, they came to us.”
This recollection of events isn’t exactly what Bey’s camp says happened and have responded in kind. In a statement back to The Sun, her team stated “The comments made by Right Said Fred stating that Beyoncé used ‘I’m Too Sexy’ in ‘Alien Superstar’ without permission are erroneous and incredibly disparaging,” the singer’s team wrote in a statement to The Sun.
“Permission was not only granted for its use, but they publicly spoke of their gratitude for being on the album.” They added, “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.” As for claims of having a small percentage of the writing credits, Bey’s team said “Collectively the Right Said Fred writers own more than any other singular writer and have co-writer credit. This accusation is false.”
Ironically this is almost the same thing she went through will Kelis over her song Milkshake. Essentially because she sang on a song someone else wrote, Kelis was not entitled to any money from the song and Beyonce had listed her name as a courtesy. After an online rant about how terrible and disrespectful Bey is, she removed her name from the track info AND her part was removed from the song.
