Taiwanese singer Crowd Lu’s ‘Your Name Engraved Herein’, the Golden Horse Award-winning theme song of the 2020 coming-of-age film of the same name, has been caught up in a whole load of controversy after picking up Song of the Year at the recent Golden Melody Awards.

On Saturday (Aug 28), Taiwanese host Jacky Wu made a very public accusation of plagiarism against the track, saying that it sounds suspiciously similar to an ‘80s song called ‘Reality’ by English singer Richard Sanderson.

Netizens soon chimed in by pointing out that ‘Name’ also bears resemblance to an instrumental ballad called ‘Freedom Hill’ (direct translation) by Chinese pianist JINBAO, getting the song into even deeper trouble.

After his victorious night at the ceremony, Crowd, 36, took to Facebook to ‘apologise’ for winning and to pay tribute to the creators of ‘Your Name’, Malaysian songwriters Keon Chia and Hooi Yuan Teng, as well as Singapore’s Tan Boon Wah.

However, ever since the plagiarism allegations, he’s been getting a lot of not-so-nice comments on his page, such as: “Return your award”, “‘Freedom Hill’ + ‘Reality’ = ‘Your Name Engraved Herein’”, and “This will be a mark that you’ll never be able to avoid, so you should really think about whether you need to return your award.”

There are even those who are calling for the track’s Golden Horse Award for Best Original Film Song to be revoked as well.

The drama got so intense that Keon, Yuan Teng, and Boon Wah’s company, Warner Chappell Music, released an official statement through a lawyer declaring that ‘Your Name’ is an original composition and that there was “by no means [any] plagiarism”.

The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee has also responded, explaining that until the law determines that there was indeed plagiarism involved, they will not be retracting ‘Your Name’s’ eligibility for the Best Original Film Song award.

As for its Golden Melody Award, Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture stated that any copyright infringement disputes must be raised by the copyright holder, and that they will conduct a follow-up investigation only after the Intellectual Property and Commercial Court has rendered a judgement.

In any case, it seems unlikely that this will ever be brought to court — ‘Reality’ was written by French composer Vladimir Cosma over 40 years ago, and while JINBAO is aware of the allegations of his piece being ripped off, he said that he doesn’t particularly care about it and he’ll just “concentrate on doing [his] own thing”.

While Crowd himself has not addressed this issue, fans say that he should not be the one bearing the brunt of the criticism, which should be directed at the songwriters instead.

Questions have also been raised about the abilities and qualifications of awards show judges, with netizens hoping that the judging panel and songwriters will have the courage to own up to their mistakes if the claims of plagiarism really turn out to be true.

Photos: IMDb, 金曲 GMA/Facebook, Warner Chappell Music Asia Pacific/Facebook