The guy who co-wrote the Grammy-winning hit ‘Clarity’ with Zedd has unleashed at the producer on social media.
Matthew Koma, who also teamed up with Zedd on his hit single ‘Spectrum’, has accused his former collaborator of being “abusive”, “toxic and self-serving” and of ripping off his work.
“It’s a really sad truth because I’m extremely proud of the work he and I did together,” Koma wrote in a post shared across his social media channels, to strangely mark the seventh birthday of ‘Clarity’.
“Unfortunately my good feelings toward those songs have all but disappeared as they were experienced alongside someone to toxic and self serving that it occupied the space where any happiness could exist.
“The blows started small — him giving interviews about ‘the lyrics he wrote’ (I wrote every word and melody) with no mention of my name…” he continued.
“More or less, I was just brushed under the rug while he took all the credit. Which felt confusing because the millions of people who connected to ‘Clarity’ and those other songs, seemed to connect to the lyrics/emotion/melodies I had written. But he deemed his kick drum sound the driving force and left me out of all shared credit.”
Zedd’s disgruntled former songwriting partner also levelled a few other bizarre accusations at the DJ, claiming that he never paid him for his work singing on ‘Spectrum’ until years after the fact, and that Zedd also barred him from releasing a track that he’d written and produced because Zedd wanted it for himself.
He also reckons Zedd refused to play ‘Clarity’ in any other key but C because he couldn’t figure out how (look, those black keys are the hard keys OK).
“I came to find out he could only play piano in the key of C and the keyboard wouldn’t transpose,” Koma writes. “Sort of contradicted the whole ‘genius classical pianist’ persona.”
“For those always wondering why there was never any more music from the two of us, it wasn’t really my choice. Now, he has plenty of people to write his songs and produce his tracks and help him continue on his trajectory.”
He concluded: “I’d rather scrub toilets than ever experience that abusive dynamic again”.
Yikes.
At the time of writing, Zedd has yet to respond.
Read Koma’s full posts below.
https://twitter.com/MatthewKoma/status/1136338615858917376
https://twitter.com/MatthewKoma/status/1136338691079659520
