“Back in 1979, I wrote a little song called ‘If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me,’” said David Bellamy in a press release that landed in e-mail inboxes with the subject line, “If I Said You Ripped Off My Song, Would You Hold It Against Me?” “That little song went No. 1 and has since become one of the defining songs of our career. If you listen to the lyrics of Britney Spears’ new single, ‘Hold It Against Me,’ you’ll find some major similarities. We feel completely ripped off.”
Indeed, Ms. Spears’ new single, written by Bonnie McKee, Lukasz Gottwald, Mathieu Jomphe and Max Martin, asks, “If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me?”
USA Today’s Edna Gunderson reviewed the single in Tuesday’s paper by noting that it was “built on one of the dumbest pickup lines in bar-hopping history.”
It’s doubtful that Spears is trying to hop on David and Howard Bellamy’s fame wagon to advance her career: She’s no country music scholar, and she wasn’t born until two and a half years after the Brothers topped country charts with their hit.
David Bellamy has explained for years that he was inspired to write the song after hearing Groucho Marx utter the pickup line on his You Bet Your Life show.
No word from the Marx estate on this situation, and Spears’ camp did not reply to a Tuesday afternoon e-mail inquiry.
Published by Peter Cooper on January 11, 2011 in The Tennessean.
