In an age where record labels are struggling to sell physical albums and now even digital copies, the last thing you need is a mix-up occurring 10 days before an album’s release. Especially when that mistake costs you more than $50,000.

But that’s the unfortunate situation Matador Records found itself in around the 2016 release of Teens of Denial by Car Seat Headrest, another record that earned the indie darling widespread critical praise.

Will Toledo, who performs as Car Seat Headrest, was fast becoming the artist du jour for the blogosphere, charming critics and journalists with his deft songcraft and his wit. But no amount of wit could extract Matador Records from the tangled legal web they found themselves in with what should have been a routine album release.

As The AV Club reported at the time, the issue was to do with one of the tracks on Teens of Denial, ‘Just What I Needed / Not Just What I Needed’. An homage to the iconic Cars song, both Toledo and Matador thought a sample of that very Cars tune was cleared for use.

Toledo used excerpts from the original song, weaving them in and out of his own composition, altering lyrics, and playing with the expectations of the listener. Apparently, Cars frontman Ric Ocasek wasn’t thrilled about having his song used in this way.

“Matador had negotiated for a license in good faith months ago, only to be told last week that the publisher involved was not authorized to complete the license in the United States, and that Ric Ocasek preferred that his work not be included in the song,” Matador wrote in a statement.

As a result, some 10,000 LPs and CDs needed to be destroyed. According to Matador’s head of sales, that process was to cost the label more than $50,000 and that was just for the US release. “It could look even more grim,” said Rusty Clarke at the time, “because this is also a worldwide release.”

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“This is definitely an unprecedented situation,” Clarke told The AV Club. “We’ve never had to actually recall an album from retail before.” As a result, the album’s physical release has been pushed back two months to July.

According to Clarke, whilst digital copies could just have the track switched out, “we had to redeliver it elsewhere. That means that we lost our pre-orders. So that was a little bit sad, too. And, of course, it’s not a great customer experience for those people who had pre-orders.”

However, Toledo was placid about the situation. “For the label, this was a nightmare situation,” he told The AV Club, “I was the only person in the situation who was used to being 10 days from an album release and not having the album done.

“I don’t think that Ric ever listened to the album or the song,” he bemoaned to The Wall Street Journal, “which is the only part that really bothers me.”

“He can do whatever he wants and it’s his right to do so. But I just hope that if I ever get to the point of being where he is, and a situation like this comes along, that my first reaction would still be, ‘Okay, well, what’s the song?’

“I would want to listen to it first and see what, artist-to-artist, what’s going on, rather than it be my manager telling me they’re doing something bad, let’s sue them, and saying, ‘Okay, I’m mad now.

“I have no idea what the situation is, because it’s removed by many people from me, but that seems to be the situation here.”

A costly error, and one we’re sure nobody involved will ever hope to repeat.

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