Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Lana Del Rey · S5 E5
Get Free
Radiohead accusations, creative freedom, and the closing statement of an era
January 2018. Lana Del Rey tweets that Radiohead wants 100% of the publishing on her closing track "Get Free," claiming it sounds like "Creep." She offers 40%. They say no.
"Creep" (Radiohead, 1993). The song Radiohead's publishers claim Lana copied on "Get Free." Press play, listen to the chord progression, and decide for yourself. This is the kind of accusation that could crush a lesser artist's confidence. Lana takes it to court instead.
The Accusation
The claim lands in January 2018 and immediately goes viral. Radiohead's publisher, Warner Chappell Music, says "Get Free" borrows too heavily from the chord progression and melody of "Creep." For Lana, the timing is cruel: "Get Free" is the most optimistic, liberation-themed song she's ever written, and now it's tied up in a legal fight with one of the most respected bands in rock history.
Sources
Variety
NME
The Guardian
TAP TO REVEAL: What makes the Radiohead accusation deeply ironic?
Creep, Radiohead (1993)
"Creep" is built on a four-chord progression that descends in a way that feels simultaneously beautiful and desperate. Jonny Greenwood's guitar stabs before each chorus were originally meant to sabotage the song because he hated how soft it was. The chord movement that Radiohead's publishers flagged in "Get Free" sits in the same harmonic territory, but whether similarity equals copying is a question musicians have argued about since the invention of the pop song.
Sources
Rolling Stone
Pitchfork
Get Free
By March 2018, Lana tells a concert audience that her lawsuit is over and she can "sing that song any time I want." The exact terms were never disclosed. What matters more than the legal outcome is what "Get Free" represents as the closing track of Lust for Life: an artist who spent five albums fighting for creative control, writing a song about finally achieving it, even when someone tries to take it away.
Sources
Variety
Billboard
Get Free: The Facts
Heroin, Lana Del Rey
From Lust for Life (2017). While "Get Free" is the album's closing statement, "Heroin" is its emotional peak: a six-minute track about the seductive pull of self-destruction, set against images of the American landscape. The production builds from a whisper to a wall of sound, and Lana's vocal goes places she's never taken it before. This is the Lust for Life track that convinced critics she was making her best work yet.
Heroin, Lana Del Rey (2017)
"I'm flying to the moon again, dreaming about heroin" she sings, and the lyrics refuse to separate the beauty of escape from its cost. It's Lana at her most ambitious: six minutes of rising tension that never resolves.
In what year was Radiohead's 'Creep' originally released?
Lust for Life proved Lana could be optimistic, collaborative, and political. Now she meets a new producer who will strip everything back to its bones. Next season: Jack Antonoff, a piano, and an album called Norman Fucking Rockwell! that critics will call the best record of 2019.
0 XP earned this session