The BBC reports that Olivia Rodrigo sought permission from the cult 1980s band The Waitresses before releasing her festive single. The familiar sound is therefore intentional and acknowledged, not an accidental resemblance.
Key takeaways
- The BBC reports that Olivia Rodrigo approached The Waitresses for permission before her festive single came out.
- The Waitresses’ best-known seasonal recording is Christmas Wrapping, a new wave track that has become a fixture of alternative Christmas playlists.
- Sampling reuses part of an existing recording, while interpolation re-performs part of an existing composition, and the two can require different permissions.
- Asking before release allows the use of older material to be settled in advance, rather than disputed after a song is already public.
Olivia Rodrigo’s festive single
The core of the story is short. According to the BBC, Olivia Rodrigo sought permission from The Waitresses before putting out a Christmas single, and the resemblance between the new song and the band’s work is intentional.
Several details are not established by the material available for this article. It does not give the single’s title, and it does not specify which elements are shared with the older music, such as a melody, a lyric, a rhythm or simply a general style. It also does not say what form the permission took, what terms were agreed, whether money changed hands or how the songwriting is credited. Those points should be treated as unknown here.
The distinction matters because a resemblance can take many forms. A song can quote an earlier track directly, rebuild one of its recognisable parts or merely adopt its mood. Each of these carries different creative and legal implications, so the description “sounds familiar” tells a listener only part of the story.
The Waitresses
The Waitresses were an American new wave band formed in Akron, Ohio, a city also associated with the wider post-punk and new wave scene of that era. The BBC’s description of them as a cult act is a fair summary of their standing: they were never among the largest acts of the decade, yet they are remembered with unusual affection.
Their reputation rests on a small number of songs. I Know What Boys Like is the other title most often connected with them, and it is built around the same dry, conversational delivery that marks their festive work. The group’s female lead vocal and wry, observational writing set them apart from much of the pop around them, and that combination is a large part of why they have remained a reference point for later musicians.
Cult status also has a practical effect on how a band’s work travels. A group of this kind is often rediscovered in waves, through compilations, film and television, cover versions and streaming playlists. A new release that draws on such a band can introduce it to listeners who have never heard the original, although any effect of this kind on The Waitresses’ audience is not known at this stage.
Christmas Wrapping
The source summary does not name the track involved. Even so, Christmas Wrapping is the obvious point of comparison, because it is the band’s celebrated Christmas recording. It should be read here as context, not as confirmation of what the new single borrows.
The track first appeared on a seasonal compilation issued by the New York label ZE Records. It stands apart from most Christmas standards in both sound and subject. Instead of sleigh bells and sentiment, it uses a loose, funk-inflected new wave groove with horns and a vocal that sits closer to talking than singing. The lyric follows a woman who is worn out by the season and plans to spend it alone, after a year of near misses with a man she keeps failing to meet properly. The two finally run into each other at a late-night shop on Christmas Eve, both having forgotten something for dinner.
That story is a large part of the song’s lasting appeal. It treats Christmas as a tiring social obligation before allowing a modest happy ending, which gives it a different emotional register from the more openly joyful seasonal canon. It has also had a life beyond the original recording, including a cover by the Spice Girls that was issued on one of their singles.
Sampling, interpolation and clearance
Seeking permission is a routine part of the music industry, even if the public seldom hears about it. A commercial recording generally involves two separate copyrights: one in the underlying composition, meaning the melody and lyrics, and one in the sound recording itself.
A sample takes an actual piece of an existing recording and places it in a new track. This normally requires clearance from the owners of both the recording and the composition. An interpolation, by contrast, re-records a recognisable part of an earlier song with new performers. Because the original recording is not used, the permission generally concerns the composition alone.
Ownership can also be complicated. The people who wrote or performed a song are not always the people who control its rights today, since publishers and labels may hold some or all of them. Approaching a band can therefore be an artistic courtesy, a legal requirement or both. Which of those applied in this case is not known from the material available.
The timing of a request has practical consequences. Where permission is settled before release, the terms can be agreed quietly. Where an influence is identified only after a song has become public, the matter may be handled through later credit changes or formal disputes. The precise legal test for infringement also varies between countries and turns on the facts of each case, so a general account of the practice cannot predict the outcome of any particular dispute.
What this borrowing shows about Christmas pop
Taken together, the single, the band and the clearance process point to something specific about seasonal music. Christmas pop is an unusually backward-looking form. Listeners return to the same recordings every year, and a new song enters a repertoire already filled with older ones. Referring openly to an established favourite is one way for a new release to find a place in that repertoire, because the audience already has a relationship with the source.
The choice of source is also informative. The Waitresses represent a less obvious strand of the Christmas canon, one built on irony and fatigue as well as warmth. Drawing on that strand signals a particular kind of seasonal song, and it treats a cult recording as heritage worth acknowledging.
The episode also shows how visible the permission process has become as part of a song’s public story. Clearance has traditionally been a back-office task, recorded in contracts and liner notes. In this case, the request itself is the angle that made the story newsworthy for the BBC. The detail tells audiences that the resemblance was intended, and it frames the older band as a party to the new work, not as a source that was overlooked.
What remains to be seen is how the song is received, and how far its release draws listeners back to the original. Neither can be measured from what has been reported so far.
Sources and further reading
- BBC News, arts coverage: the report that the single’s release followed a request for permission from The Waitresses.
- UK Intellectual Property Office: official guidance on how copyright applies to music, useful further reading on clearance.
- PRS for Music: UK collecting society material on songwriting and publishing rights, useful further reading on compositions.
- Music reference works such as AllMusic: background reading on The Waitresses and their recordings.
Surfaced from the rss:bbc_arts signal “a festive pop single”. AI-assisted draft, editorially reviewed.
