Yesterday the US Air Force made music headlines when an unauthorized, re-recorded version of The White Stripes’ “Fell In Love With A Girl” was used to soundtrack a Super Bowl-airing recruitment ad. To those with functioning ears it was obvious that the commercial’s sound/chord progression/structure was directly lifted from The Stripes’ White Blood Cells hit. Unfortunately, for fans of calling shit out, the Air Force Reserve has since removed the offending commercial and hence the ability to demonstrate how batshit crazy these “completely unintentional” similarities are.
The White Stripes were understandably peeved and issued the following statement: “We believe our song was re-recorded and used without permission of the White Stripes, our publishers, label or management. The White Stripes take strong insult and objection to the Air Force Reserve presenting this advert with the implication that we licensed one of our songs to encourage recruitment during a war that we do not support…We have not licensed this song to the Air Force Reserve and we plan to take strong action to stop the ad containing this music.”
In rebuttal the Air Force Reserve then issued a statement that deflected all blame to their Advertising Agency: The Air Force Reserve, through its advertising agency, hired Fast Forward Music of Salt Lake City to score original music for its commercial. There was never any intention to utilize any existing music or to sound like any music by the band White Stripes or any other musical performer. Any similarity or likeness to any other music is completely unintentional.
The fraudulent cherry on top of this plagiarism sundae then came via Kem Kraft (aka Rippy McRipoff) the freelance musician who was commissioned to pen the track in the first place. Speaking with The New York Times Kraft said: “I wasn’t familiar with the White Stripes song. I’ve heard of the White Stripes but I’m not a listener of theirs. I had no idea there was similarity until after the fact.” If the Air Force ad was still online the sheer ridiculousness of this lie and the accusatory brainwaves of everyone who watched it would cause Kraft’s pants to spontaneously combust. FACT.
