Paramore’s Hayley Williams recently unleashed her first batch solo songs and accompanying videos off her upcoming album Petals for Armor to the delight of her fans, but not everybody was thrilled.
A Swedish musician known as ionnalee and her fans accused Hayley of blatant plagiarism with several of the visuals in her videos bearing a striking resemblance to imagery ionnalee had used in hers: cocoons, flower petals, white body suits and more.
ionnalee even tweeted: "Plagiarism is never flattery. Use your own brain and body."
Rather than sit back and let rumors fester, Hayley posted an Instagram Story to address the story head on.
"I'm shocked and even more so because I didn't know who this artist was and that's no slight because now that I do they seem pretty brilliant...This happens a lot in creative spaces. We're all humans feeding off (the same) raw human emotion…so this just happens..I've been vocal about all my influences because I'm proud of them and I can say with 100% confidence…this artist was definitely not one of them."
If you want to see some of the videos in question by both artists side-by-side take a look below:
Hayley’s album Petals for Armor arrives May 8th.
Photo: Getty Images