HRT held a special meeting today in order to evaluate whether Nina Kraljic’s Eurovision song “Lighthouse” is a plagiarism of a Swedish song “Uncover” by Zara Larsson.
Croatian musicians Emilio Kutlesa, Ante Pecotic and Maro Market, together with the Acting Director of the Business Unit “Produkcija”, Sanja Ivancin, have listened to both songs, and they came out with the following statement:
The song “Lighthouse”, sung by Nina Kraljic is not plagiarism. In fact, there is a phrase of two bars identical to those in the song “Uncover”, which is often the case in music. However, in the opinion of the expert commission there is sufficient evidence to suggest that this is not plagiarism, because the definition of plagiarism implies a melodic line of four bars that are fully consistent with the original, and this is not the case in this song. The song “Lighthouse” is a reminiscent of similar songs of their musical genre.
As a reminder, Nina Kraljic was internally selected by HRT to represent Croatia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2016 with her song “Lighthouse”, and she will taking part in the first half of the first semi final, on the 10th of May in Stockholm. The song was also accepted by the EBU to take part in the Song Contest, with no claims of plagiarism. Give a listen to Nina’s song right here:
