Creaky Boards vs. Coldplay

Andrew Hoepfner of Brooklyn band Creaky Boards claims Coldplay swiped his song.

With their gentle hooks and celebrity endorsements, Coldplay is one of rock's least offensive bands. (Naming his daughter Apple was as close as frontman Chris Martin has come to controversy.) But a new YouTube video from a Brooklyn musician puts forth a surprising conspiracy theory about the English group's latest single, "Viva La Vida." In the video, Andrew Hoepfner of local indie act Creaky Boards compares the song to his own tune (titled, rather remarkably, "The Songs I Didn't Write"), and makes the startling claim that the megastars cribbed his melody.

The songs do share similarities, including an opening drum line and soaring vocal motif. But whether this was plagiarism or mere coincidence may come down to a matter of dates. In the video, Hoepfner suggests that a man looking like Martin was in the crowd at his band's October 2007 CMJ show. Yet according to NME.com, a Coldplay spokesperson claims that Martin was in London at the time (apparently there is diary proof). What's more, the same spokesperson states that the song had been "written and demoed" in March 2007. There remains the possibility, of course, that Creaky Boards are just very clever guerrilla marketers.