Ariana Grande’s "7 Rings" is a Smash, But 90% of the Profits Go to Dead People

No thank u.

Ariana Grande’s latest album, thank u next, has been her biggest to date, largely off the back of her current chart-topping single "7 rings".

However, as we’ve documented previously, a bunch of artists reckon the track rips them off.

Well, Ari has bad news for anyone seeking royalties: 90 per cent of the profits are already being diverted to Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, the songwriters of "My Favourite Things" from The Sound of Music.

Of course, the fact that Grande’s sharing royalties with the legendary duo of Rodgers & Hammerstein is no surprise, as the song’s interpolation of that classic tune is pretty explicit.

Listen for approximately seven seconds and immediately know what we mean:

However, as the New York Times notes, it’s pretty wild that Rodgers & Hammerstein are collecting a whopping 90 per cent of the royalties, given there are ten credited writers in total, and R&H are the only dead ones. (Even several decades after their death, they’re still making bank. Legit.)

It turns out the deal to licence their tune was made mere weeks prior to the release of "7 rings" (makes sense considering how quickly Ari turned around her latest album so soon after Sweetener). Concord, which owns the R&H musical catalogue, collects that 90 per cent figure on behalf of their corpses.

The good news, for Ari, is that even though she’s missing out on presumably millions of dollars of songwriting royalties, she gets an additional amount for being the song's "recording artist".

Either way, Ari, break up with your royalties negotiator, I’m bored.