If you’ve been paying attention to the news, you’ve heard that China’s capital of Beijing was recently announced as the host of the 2022 Winter Olympics, becoming the first city to hold a Summer Games and a Winter Games.
The announcement has not been without controversy. Environmentalists say China lacks sufficient snow to host the Winter Games, while others are highlighting the country’s repressive government and history of human rights abuses.
Now, as the New York Times reports, the Beijing 2022 campaign has been hit with another PR disaster, which might even ensnare the organisers of the Beijing Winter Games in a lawsuit with the Walt Disney Corporation.
Scores of people online are saying an official song of the Games, titled ‘The Snow and Ice Dance’, sounds suspiciously similar to ‘Let It Go’, the wildly popular ballad that became the breakout hit of the multi-platinum-selling Frozen soundtrack.
Most of the comments left on the official YouTube page for ‘The Snow and Ice Dance’, one of 10 official songs recorded for the Games, were written in Chinese, although it’s not clear how many came from the mainland where YouTube is officially banned.
“I nearly sang ‘Let it Go!’” wrote commenter Zeta Fera. “Rubbish country,” leckylecky added. “Only understands how to copy copy copy.” Meanwhile, Ben Wang commented rather sternly, “Their shame knows no bounds.”
An analysis posted by Caijing Online noted multiple similarities that go beyond just the melodic parallels – both songs employ a piano as the major instrument, have similar prelude chords and an eight-beat introduction, and they are almost the exact same tempo.
When the Times reached out for comment, a spokeswoman for the Beijing Games’ organising committee, Xiao Junfeng, requested that questions be submitted by fax, saying she could not comment without authorization, which she didn’t have, because China.
The controversy over the two songs, which readers can find embedded above, comes a month after a dispute erupted over the Chinese animated film The Autobots, which featured characters that looked almost identical to those in Disney’s Cars.
