ROBBIE Williams has broken his silence on a supposed copyright row with Olivia Rodrigo after fans accused the American of ripping off one of his huge hits.
We previously reported how the singer, who went on to forge a hugely successful solo career with tracks including Angels and Let Me Entertain You, after the scandal came to light online.
sent fans into a frenzy after releasing a brand new Christmas track titled Take Me Home 4 Christmas.
The single was written by the star herself and is her first holiday song.
Olivia’s song was revealed to have heavily drawn inspiration from the 1980s band The Waitresses in relation to their 1981 holiday hit “Christmas Wrapping” but some listeners then compared her new track to Robbie Williams’ hit single Candy.
Now the Stoke-born hitmaker, 52, has brushed off the flurry of comparisons and insisted he “loves” Olivia and “couldn’t care less” about similarities.
In a lengthy text post, uploaded in black font and white background to his grid, he wrote: “There’s something about the music industry that’s been bothering me for a while.
“People coming after people because they’ve spotted a similarity between two songs.
“Some of it I completely understand, some of it is justified.
“Most of it, I think, is complete b******s”.
Robbie then went on to detail how he had people “come after me” over the years for similar-sounding tracks before addressing the issue with the Drivers License singer directly and said: “Music has been around for a very long time, we are all going to bump into each other eventually.
“Which brings me to Olivia Rodrigo. I love Olivia Rodrigo. I have loved her since Brutal.
“What a f**king record I wish I’d have made it”.
After praising her sweary stage presence he added: “It sounds to me as though she may have accidentally stumbled across a musical echo of mine in one of her new songs.
“And do you know what? I couldn’t care less.
“I don’t want to know if there’s technically a publishing issue, a copyright issue, or no issue whatsoever.
“And I don’t want to know. I’m not going after her.
“Because at some point some f**king sanity has to prevail”.
The No Regrets singer admitted he was in a privileged position in his career to be able to take his chosen stance.
And he told how he worried calling out accidental similarities in music – rather than genuine copying – would “frighten the creativity out of everyone”.
He wrapped up his lengthy message with the words: “Lots of love and happy Christmas Rob x”.
While Robbie disabled comments on his upload, more than 1,000 people had re-posted it at the time of writing, showing their seal of approval.
Olivia has been accused in the past of copying other songs.
This has included her track Good 4 You compared to Paramore’s Misery Business and Olivia’s Deja Vu to Taylor Swift’s Cruel Summer.
Over the weekend, many videos were uploaded of Robbie and Olivia’s tracks to social media overlapping what some people think are similar notes and melodies.
The videos caught the attention of Robbie himself who initially took to to have his say on the discourse.
In his first post on the issue, he simply wrote: “Happy Christmas @oliviarodrigo x”
