Lizzy McAlpine is talking plagiarism, and she's the one raising her hand. Her new album Angel just dropped, and in the middle of the rollout she copped to accidentally echoing a Nick Drake track. That's a bold move.
Plagiarism chatter has been everywhere since Stella Lefty caught four separate ripoff allegations, so the timing is loaded. McAlpine getting ahead of it feels like the smarter play. Anyone who lived inside five seconds flat back in 2022, or leaned on the ache of "ceilings," knows she writes from a real place. This isn't a copycat career. It's a songwriter who absorbed the greats and slipped a little too close to one.
Drake's shadow looms over half of modern folk, so an accidental soundalike is almost a rite of passage. The fact that she named it herself, rather than waiting for the internet to do the math, says plenty.
Angel is here, the honesty is refreshing, and the catalog keeps growing. Own the moment, that's the move.