A few days ago, Oliver Tree took to Instagram to accuse The Kid Laroi of plagiarizing his music videos. The post featured a montage of shots from several of the “Life Goes On” singer’s music videos compared to The Kid Laroi‘s most recent video for “Thousand Miles.” The resemblance is striking, especially the scene with a falling piano and the scene with an ambulance running the artist over. Fans in the comments agreed that the similarities were undeniable. Today, an interview with Oliver Tree about this controversy was posted on Rolling Stone.
“The exact same frame, the exact same ambulance, the exact same thing,” he told the magazine. “It just seemed a little bit odd that even the framing is exactly the same.” He found out that Laroi’s director Christian Breslauer follows him on Instagram, so he doesn’t even blame the singer. Tree even consulted a lawyer, but ended up deciding not to pursue legal action, and clarified that he’s “not trying to ruin the guy’s career.” “It’s a lot easier to just build off the things that already exist and flipping it than doing something new,” he said.
Watch the Instagram montage below and check out the full Rolling Stone interview here.
Oliver Tree is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.