A fallen idol

People may have seen the NZ Herald story on Tuesday, about the song by NZ Idol runner-up Michael Murphy, being a cover, not an original.

Murphy’s manager, Paul Ellis, seems to believe in shooting the messenger and described the person Robyn who discovered the other song as “a person who commits fraud everyday by downloading songs” and further “This guy Robyn obviously went to Kazaa or LimeWire purposely to download the song”.

As it happens I have met (once) the Robyn in question, who is Robyn Gallagher of Secret Passage fame (her blog is one of the very first I started reading years ago).

Now one can not be 100% sure about anything nowadays with the famous Georginas and Miriams out there, but I am almost definite that Robyn is female, not male.

Robyn on the NZ Idol blog points out in a letter to the NZ Herald (which refuses to publish it) that she does not and did not do illegal music downloads, and the song was available free of charge from the band’s website.

So it appears that Paul Ellis owes Robyn a rather big apology. He shot from the hip, he was wrong, and the longer he leaves it the less credibility he has.

Rachel, who created the popular idolblog site, has a summary of the story posted on her personal blog.