This week's most viral, and most infuriating video from the music world comes from X Factor New Zealand, where judge Natalia Kills simply eviscerates contestant Joe Irvine for allegedly stealing his look from her husband, fellow judge Willy Moon.
The verbal assault starts simply enough, with Kills referring to the vocalist as a "doppelgänger" and referencing the similarities between Irvine and Moon. The audience laughs, assuming it's a pleasant joke. It wasn't. The term "disgust" couldn't be used more, and then Moon adds his own fuel to the fire by comparing Irvine to Norman Bates, and literally suggesting that the contestant might kill the audience to make a skin suit.
By this point the audience has picked up on the non-joke and begin booing the judges loudly. Fellow judge Melanie Blatt has caught on that Irvine is bordering on tears and tells him that he's a better-dressed version of Moon before making a disgusted noise aimed at the duo on the other side of the bench. She showed remarkable restraint, letting it all out on social media by calling Kills a tw*t.
Thankfully, both Kills and Moon were fired from the gig and can look forward to not being able to tour heavily in years to come. Here are five cases of musicians copping another's style:
Natalia Kills and Willy Moon
If you were surprised at this pair appearing first on the list, you underestimated how steamed their pathetic, narcissistic tirade got us. Moon is the easier target: Male musicians have been wearing suits and slicking their hair back for nearly a century. The most obvious examples in recent years include Jack White's Lazaretto phase, Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys, and Justin Timberlake. Hell, even women have adopted the look (Janelle Monae comes to mind). Calvin Harris chimed in on Instagram, referring to Moon as a "Cliff Richards looking motherf*cker." If Moon thinks he's a revolutionary, he's got another thing coming. As for his wife, she certainly rocks a more diverse range of get-ups...and the Twitterverse was quick to call her out on all of them. Among the images included were Kills borrowing a look from Lady Gaga (who admittedly had borrowed the look from Amy Winehouse) and Kills borrowing a look from Johnny Depp-as-Willy Wonka. One even noted that her outfit the night of the rant was eerily similar to a typical Jessie J getup. We understand that finding an 100 percent unique look is nearly impossible. Understanding that, accusing others of stealing "your" personal style or your husband's is a dangerous proposition.
Liberace
Liberace embodies the spirit of the Las Vegas music show scene like no one else, no even latecomer Elvis Presley. His bejeweled suits, bejeweled piano and bejeweled everything made his style instantly recognizable. Despite all of that, the pianist angrily denied suggestions that he was a homosexual, although his relationship with Scott Thorson was well-documented. If, and we can only hypothesize, Liberace were actually gay, it would be somewhat understandable that he kept in out of the public domain. After all, society still hasn't warmed up to the idea as it should have. Just like today, men who displayed more flamboyant tendencies were ridiculed in Liberace's day. That explains why Gorgeous George—a colorfully-dressed, well-trimmed wrestler from the '40s—came to be known as a "villain" in that era's wrestling circuit...because the hyper-hetero culture enjoyed watching him clobbered. His famous ring prop? A candelabra.
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan may be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, songwriters in American history. That's not to say he never copped a fashion tip or two from other icons. Before he established himself as a folk icon, Dylan did his hair up in a pompadour like Little Richard. As you can imagine, such an image doesn't jive much with the image of the freewheeling '60s folkie however. Dylan began to style himself after his icon Woody Guthrie, who preferred his hair messy and his clothes relatively unkempt. There's no denying that Dylan took his approach to folk in a glorious new direction but his actual appearance while he was writing? All Guthrie. Dylan can at least claim to have paid for it: He frequently visited Guthrie for years while the latter was stuck at the Greystone Park Psychiatric Hospital (suffering from Huntington's disease), playing him music and letting a little bit of sunlight into the long-forgotten icon's life.
Lady Gaga
Many, many claims have been brought against Lady Gaga, alleging the theft of style (Madonna is a popular comparison point). Most of the time, it seems that the only unifying theme in the pop star's dress has been general bizarreness. One theory is particularly unsettling and probably at least partially true: Stephanie Germanotta got the idea for the Lady Gaga persona from Lina Morgana. The latter had worked with Gaga in her more mundane days, and both were working toward pop recognition. Morgana was renowned for her dramatic live performances and for wearing a variety of costumes and wigs to exaggerate her stage persona. Unfortunately the vocalist killed herself during 2008 at the age of 19. Rob Fusari, the producer of Gaga's debut album The Fame, had worked with both. Morgana's mother and ex-boyfriend have both weighed in, the latter calling a Gaga music video "like looking at a ghost."
James Franco
OK, so James Franco obviously didn't steal his everyday look from another celebrity. He's a fairly plain-looking dude. One of his performances was widely attributed to the look of another musician however: The character of Alien, a drug dealer, looked remarkably like Riff Raff, a rapper of similar hairstyle and colorful (read: obnoxious) taste in clothing and jewelry. The emcee himself called the studio out for it, noting that he had been contacted by director Harmony Korine about starring in the film. Franco claimed that the character was actually based on Florida rapper Dangeruss, a dreadlocked character who also appears in the film. Riff Raff would later bring a lawsuit worth $10 million against Muse Productions, although no news has come from that since it was filed during 2013.
