Korean boy band Seventeen and their agency Pledis Entertainment are embroiled in a plagiarism issue over the song "Don't Wanna Cry."
The track was the lead single of the mini album "AI1", released last May by Seventeen.
Back then, some had already raised the issue of the song being similar to The Chainsmokers and Coldplay's song "Something Just Like This," which was released last February, ahead of Seventeen's album.
Now, Pledis Entertainment has decided to legally credit the two bands for "Don't Wanna Cry." However, they refuse to admit any plagiarism on their part.
Yonhap News published an exclusive report on Sunday, with the title "Seventeen admitted plagiarism? 'Don't wanna cry' registered Coldplay as a producer."
Originally, the song listed Seventeen member Woozi and Bumzu as producers in the Korea Music Copyright Association listing.
But now, Pledis has added The Chainsmokers' Andrew Taggart and Coldplay's Guy Berryman, Jonathan Buckland, William Champion and John Anthony Christopher Martin as producers on the KMCA website.
In a statement, Pledis Entertainment said, "We received inquiries about the similarity of some of the melodies between the songs from the two publishing parties."
But it insisted that "Don't Wanna Cry" is an original track.
"We are asserting that 'Don't Wanna Cry' is an independently created song but we were worried that the artists would suffer a great amount of stress if it came to legal disputes and that their image might adversely be affected regardless of the truth. Because of the listed reasons above, we decided to grant/acknowledge a piece of copyright to them," the agency said.
It added, "In fact, if you check the list of copyright holders to this song, the names of the artists who participated remain the same. We would like to apologize to all the artists and fans who were worried and concerned due to the company's decision."
