Last month Volkswagen released a commercial in England for their new Polo coup. In it, a song is used in the background that sounds suspiciously close to the song “Take Care” by Beach House. As it turns out, Beach House were contacted by Volkswagen several times about licensing their song, to which the band politely declined. So they went for a natural plan B — they ripped it off with a facsimile.

Watching and hearing the ad taking  a beautiful song like the “Teen Dream” closer and crunching it into a sappy father-daughter narrative is partly entertaining, but mostly cringe-worthy. Despite the allegations that Beach House denied usage specifically for the song “Take Care,” Volkswagen are denying the ripoff, claiming they were merely evoking the general genre style, but that the song was not a direct pull. Check out the official statement:

“We greatly respect the talent of Beach House and never set out to replicate a specific song of theirs or anyone else’s. Most important to us was to find a track which matched the narrative of the advert, telling the story of the daughter’s growing up and the evolving relationship with her father, and we believe we have achieved this in the final edits.”

Bullshit, or as Beach House put it on their Facebook, “VW cop out big time.” It takes more than one specific musical motif from “Take Care” and it’s totally obvious. Check out our original article on the subject for a deeper analysis, as well as another foul made by T.G.I. Fridays recently when they did the same thing to LCD Soundsystem‘s “Daft Punk is Playing At My House.”

Volkswagen Polo Dad commercial

Beach House — “Take Care”