Olivia Rodrigo Gives Paramore Writing Credits On “good 4 u”

A week before releasing her hugely successful debut album Sour, Olivia Rodrigo dropped “good 4 u,” a snarling pop-punk banger. The song debuted at #1 and then it hung around at #2 for months afterwards. The song was always clearly indebted to Paramore, especially to the 2007 anthem “Misery Business.” Now, Variety reports that Rodrigo has retroactively given “good 4 u” songwriting credits to Paramore leader Hayley Williams and to former guitarist Josh Farro, the two writers of “Misery Business.”

This isn’t the first time that Rodrigo has handed out retroactive songwriting credits. Last month, she did something similar. Rodrigo’s song “Deja Vu” bore some similarities to Taylor Swift’s “Cruel Summer,” and Rodrigo eventually credited “Cruel Summer” writers Swift, Jack Antonoff, and St. Vincent as co-writers. In the years since Marvin Gaye’s family successfully sued Robin Thicke for “Blurred Lines,” this kind of thing has become more and more common, as a way to settle legal disputes before those disputes ever arise.

As Variety points out, Paramore’s publishers Warner Chappell Music celebrated that songwriting credit on Instagram. In her Instagram story, Hayley Williams shared that post, adding, “Our publisher is wildin rn.” In a way, then, “good 4 u” is now Paramore’s biggest hit, even though they weren’t actively involved in its creation. (Up until now, it was 2014’s “Ain’t It Fun,” which peaked at #10.) Below, listen to both “good 4 u” and “Misery Business.”

As Variety notes, Elvis Costello could probably pursue something similar, since the riff from Rodrigo’s “brutal” is basically the same one that he used on “Pump It Up” decades earlier. But Costello has tweeted that he’s not interested in doing that. Acknowledging his own debts to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” and Chuck Berry’s “Too Much Monkey Business,” Costello wrote, “This is fine by me, Billy. It’s how rock & roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did.”