Representatives of ‘A New Day Has Come’ performer Celine Dion have responded to claims she intentionally did not credit a performer, whose material she performed during an appearance on Time Square’s ‘Katie’ back in April.
After performing the song ‘Water and a Flame’ on the hit talk show, last week saw its original performer Daniel Merriweather slam the star for failing to publicly credit him for forging the song- suggesting that she intentionally tried to pass the lyrics off as her own.
He shared in an open letter:
“It is astounding that Celine Dion tries to pass off lyrics that I wrote as her own. Now, if I had written the song for her, it wouldn’t bother me so much, but Water and a Flame is a very personal song that I wrote right after a break up I was going through and is one of my personal favourite songs on my album Love & War.
“This song has every ounce of my heartache and pain in it and she pretends as if she wrote it herself.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I am genuinely flattered that anyone would want to cover one of my songs, but there is an age old etiquette amongst artists that one gives credit where credit is due. Thank you Celine Dion for singing my song, but if you had seen even half of what I have seen in my life time you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning let alone sing, so just be mindful of the fact that songs are a connection to the ether, and an insight to our inner most thoughts and feellings and for some of us it may be all we will ever have.”
Featuring ‘21′ singer Adele, the original ‘Water and a Flame‘ was released on November 2nd 2009- well before the release of the ‘Cold Shoulder‘ star’s groundbreaking LP ‘21′ and four years before it would be covered by Dion during her well received appearance on the talk show.
In response to Merriweather’s open slamming, Celine’s reps issued the following statement today:
“She loves Daniel Merriweather and Eg White’s (the co-writer) song so much, and would never want to do any harm to them … nor take away anything from them … in fact, the opposite would be true.
Throughout Celine’s 32-year career she has always been very vocal about sharing the credit for her successes. She has been very vocal about the fact that she does not write her own songs… and that she is fortunate to have wonderful and talented writers to provide these gifts to her.
“For her to be accused of ‘stealing’ a song is not only grossly inaccurate, but also very hurtful. During the thousands of interviews that she’s given over the years, it’s often that she will not mention the names of the writers involved. It’s something that may not come up a lot in the interviews.
“That said, when a Celine Dion album is released, we always include complete and accurate writer credits in an updated bio, and of course, inside the CD packaging. Celine’s new English album will be released worldwide this [autumn]. We are very excited about this new album, and we hope to have great success with it … and great success for all those who have contributed.”