Shynola and Andy J Gallagher dispute rumbles on over Coldplay's Strawberry Swing video

Earlier this week, we reported that Coldplay's music directors for Strawberry Swing, Shynola, were under suspicion for plagiarism. The accusations came from singer-songwriter Andy J Gallagher, who claimed their recent 'Strawberry Swing' video for Coldplay was a direct rip-off of his 2008 vid for 'Something Else.'

Production company Shynola, which handled the creative for the Strawberry Swing video (as well as others for Radiohead, Beck and Blur) refuted the claims of plagiarism with an inarguable six-page PDF file. Shynola use the piece to point out that, yes, their piece was not entirely original but that it came from a long lineage of visual cues, including themes from Superman, The Simpsons and Looney Tunes. Also pointing out that they had never even seen Gallagher’s video, they conclude with some humility, saying, "We can categorically deny that his video was any influence on our video. Any similarities are purely coincidental... It may have been unsupportable hyperbole from Coldplay to claim that our video was groundbreaking. But it is NOT plagiarism. And Mr. Trevor’s video is NOT groundbreaking either."

Yesterday, Mr Gallagher (and his supporters) yet again responded, under the heading of, "coldplay - the last word" (let's hope it is the last word), the following statement via his website...

firstly, thanks to shynola for putting together such a well-researched response to the recent media speculation surrounding my 'something else' and coldplay’s 'strawberry swing' videos. there are, however, a few untruths in their statement, namely;

1. i never accused coldplay or shynola of plagiarism - if you think i did, where? all i did in fact was send a letter to coldplay’s management asking if 'the bizarre set of coincidences between our videos was, in fact, just a coincidence'! a “yes they are” would’ve avoided all this!

2. i have made 3 previous statements on this, 2 are still on my website, the other can be seen on and that is all i've said on this matter.

3. according to shynola, i created a page of comparable stills, no i didn't - i wouldn't know how to!

finally, i would like to state that the 'something else' video director owen trevor had no involvement in anything other than the making of the video itself. i myself expected the letter to go to coldplay’s management and to receive a curt reply if any and that being as far as the matter went. to quote kenneth williams "infamy infamy, they've all got it in for me!"

In a previous statement, Gallagher said, “While I can’t say they copied me, there are an awful lot of similarities between my video and theirs. I think it’s unfair that ‘Strawberry Swing’ will probably be nominated for numerous awards and is being universally acclaimed as groundbreaking when [‘Something Else’ director] Owen Trevor had virtually the same idea at least a year before.”

Further to the increasing coverage the "coldplays video looks an awful lot like andy j gallagher's one", i would like to add the following. there are striking similarities between the two videos and we wrote to coldplays management asking them to explain the bizarre coincidences between the videos (both in style and script) and also to qualify chris martins assertion that 'strawberry swings' video is "unique and groundbreaking". suprisingly, they took the time to respond by email with the following: "i'm afraid the creative on the video was written by shynola not coldplay".

Here are some stills from the Strawberry Swing video...