So let me get this right: Doechii is currently nominated for Record Of The Year at this year’s Grammy awards for basically re-toplining 2013’s Record Of The Year (Gotye’s 'Somebody That I Used To Know')?! Verily hath sampling finally eaten itself! Yes, I’ve also read plenty of glowing tributes to the quality of that topline, but honestly… I challenge anyone to argue (with a straight face, at least) that Doechii’s talent could have carried any other track off Gotye’s Making Mirrors album into the chart stratosphere like this – or, indeed, to argue that Doechii’s ‘version’ can hold a candle to Gotye’s original, missing as it is Gotye’s radiant chorus harmonies and the powerfully restrained ferocity of Kimbra’s show-stopping middle-section cameo. Doechii didn’t even bother to play with the song’s structure at all, which is basically the same as it was 13 years ago…

In fact, the only silver lining to this cynical act of musical stolen valour (arguably flagrant enough to nudge Puff Daddy’s ‘I’ll Be Missing You’ into second place on The Mix Review Roll Of Shame), is that the splendid Wally De Backer (aka Gotye) will therefore receive another mountainous pile of cash with which to pursue such wonderful labours of love as his Ondioline Orchestra, an ensemble which I had the privilege of hearing up close in the live room of Sear Sound’s Studio C back in 2017. He happily chatted with me for a while after that show too, and you couldn’t meet a warmer, funnier, or more generous guy.

So, on second thoughts, let’s have three cheers for Doechii (by proxy)! I can’t say how happy it makes me to think of Wally laughing himself silly over all this. All the way to the bank.