Ariana Grande‘s single “7 Rings” is on pace to become one of the highest-performing hits of her young career. On Monday, the song reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the sixth time, beating out Post Malone and Swae Lee’s “Sunflower” and Halsey’s “Without Me.” As of Tuesday, the song has been streamed more than a billion times. Yet while Grande is certainly making a good chunk of cash off of the record, the vast majority of the songwriting royalties are being collected by two men who have each been dead for more than 40 years.
“7 Rings” is considered, by some, to be an extended interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” the song from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein hit musical The Sound of Music, a version of which was later famously performed by Julie Andrews in the film 1965 film adaption. Grande, of course, puts a 2019 spin on the song, swapping lyrics like “raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” for “Breakfast at Tiffany’s and bottles of bubbles.”
There are 10 songwriters credited on the Thank U, Next single. Two of them — Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II — control 90 percent of the songwriting royalties. According to the New York Times, Grande and her team worked out a deal with Concord Music (the company that has controlled the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalog for the last two years) just a few weeks before the song was released in January. Concord is expected to make millions off the song, while Grande and the other songwriters will only make a fraction of the remaining 10 percent.
Considering the level of success her other work has had, one can only assume Grande isn’t too stressed about the situation. On Monday, the 25-year-old kicked off the first leg her Sweetener Tour in Albany, New York with a special tribute to her late ex Mac Miller.
(Via New York Times)
