Allegations of plagiarism against ESC winner Loreen: Is “Tattoo” an ABBA copy?

With her song “Tattoo” the Swedish artist Loreen won the Eurovision Song Contest on May 13, 2023 – for the second time. If you listen to “Tattoo” — written by Loreen in collaboration with several well-known Swedish songwriters — the song sounds quite familiar. Of course, this is not an unusual phenomenon with pop songs — in this case, at least some claim, it is supposed to be plagiarism.

The chord progression of the intro and the verse are strikingly reminiscent of ABBA’s piece “The Winner Takes It All”. So much so that some Internet users published so-called mashups on YouTube, i.e. both songs were superimposed or merged. A certain resemblance cannot be denied:

Similarities to electro anthem “Flying Free”

But there are other allegations of plagiarism. Loreen and her fellow songwriters Jimmy “Joker” Thörnfeldt, Jimmy Jansson Moa “Cazzi Opeia” Carlebecker, Peter Boström and Thomas G: have served. It sounds like this:

And another song could have served as a blueprint for “Tattoo”: Many see similarities here to the song “В плену” (“Captured”) by Ukrainian singer Mika Newton. As reported by several media, Newton responded to the allegations in an Instagram story and said that she did not want to cause any drama and hoped that Loreen would win the song contest. She left it more or less open whether she saw it as a copy.

For comparison, you can hear Loreen’s ESC winning song “Tattoo” here:

Allegations of plagiarism against songwriter Thomas G:son

At least for one of the track’s songwriters, Thomas G:son, allegations of plagiarism are nothing new. In 2001 he wrote the ESC contribution “Listen To Your Heartbeat”, which is so strikingly reminiscent of the Belgian contribution from 1996 (the piece “Liefde is een kaartspel” by Lisa del Bo) that he, together with co-songwriter Henrik Sethsson, accused of plagiarism. Both initially denied the allegation, but a financial agreement was reached after the Belgian songwriting team of “Liefde is een kaartspel” and the authors’ organization SABAM threatened legal action. There has been no comment from the artist or the songwriters involved so far.