Noelle Denton, a musician who records under the name Noelle Sucks, posted on TikTok Wednesday that she thinks Olivia Rodrigo stole her performance this weekend from one of her music videos.
“So I’m pretty sure my art got stolen and put on ‘Saturday Night Live’ for Olivia Rodrigo’s most recent ‘SNL’ performance,” Denton said in the TikTok video.
In the post, Denton shared a side-by-side comparison of the 2021 music video for her song “Your Mom Calls Me,” which she wrote, edited and co-directed, and Rodrigo’s “SNL” performance of her song “All-American Bitch.” Both performances show the respective artists at tea parties, surrounded by friends looking bored. Both singers crawl on the table, smash a cake with their hands and smear it on their faces. Other resemblances include the camera slowly zooming in on each singer, and the presence of actors doing synchronized, choreographed movements.
This all came about when a friend of Denton’s shared Rodrigo’s performance with her. At first, she was excited. But then it turned to “immediate suspicion.”
“I think at the part where they cheers the cup, [it really hit me],” Denton told HuffPost on Thursday. “It’s just the same camera movement and everything. And as I’m speaking right now, I’m still open to her team saying how this is a coincidence or something.”
Denton thinks it’s possible that Tarik Mikou, Rodrigo’s creative director for the performance, saw her music video on Instagram from a mutual friend who has shared her work before. Denton messaged Mikou on the social media platform, but hasn’t heard back. Neither Mikou nor Rodrigo’s representatives have responded to a request for comment.
As Noelle Sucks, Denton has been putting out music since 2019. She has nearly 4,000 Instagram followers, 357 subscribers on YouTube and 2,200 monthly listeners on Spotify.
“The bottom line is that I want to change the trajectory of the creative industry on both sides of the camera,” Denton said. “People doing this type of stuff is a disservice to every single artist involved. I’m trying to work in the same industry, so I want to see a change. It just feels like a really important conversation.”
This isn’t the first time Rodrigo has been accused of ripping off another artist. After her debut album, “Sour,” came out, fans quickly pointed out similarities in some of the songs to works by artists like Paramore and Taylor Swift. Rodrigo ended up giving Paramore a writing credit for her song “Good 4 U,” and Swift a writing credit for her song “Deja Vu.”
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