In a series of tweets posted this past weekend, American roots (or Alt-Country) artist Jason Isbell made a claim that Country star Dierks Bentley’s new single “Home” blatantly rips off his song “In A Razor Town.” Isbell said:

 “"Dierks" has officially ripped off my song "In A Razor Town." Dierks is a douchebag.”

It’s a situation that has been levied before by people for different pairs of songs. And while the situation here is interesting to discuss, after listening to both (attached below), there is a similar vocal melody but on Isbell’s song, the guitar melody is quite familiar that it could be accused of being ‘similar’ to other songs.  My point here is that what Isbell is bringing up is a common thing that is rarely proven intentional or even correct.

A gifted artist in both his old band The Drive-by Truckers and as a solo artist, Isbell perhaps should’ve thought about what he was accusing Bentley and co-writers Dan Wilson and Brett Beavers of doing. There are only so many notes and melodies in all of music and if an artist is also a fan of music – a highly likely case – then he’s bound to have some influence seep in somewhere along the line.

In fact, during the twitter discussion, fans pointed out that Grammy-winning songwriter Dan Wilson couldn’t have been the trouble with the similarities of the song even though he was a co-writer, claiming:

“I love @DanWilsonMusic's songwriting, but I bet he's never heard my song. I bet Dierks brought that idea to the table and Dan ran with it."

But what if he has? What if Dan Wilson is a fan of Isbell’s work? Why do Dierks (and presumably Beavers) get all the blame?

Dierks Responded with this Tweet:

such an @danwilsonmusic fan @jasonisbel! so read how we wrote HOME http://tinyurl.com/7f7br5g bummer huh? back to football and my girls. goodbye

Clearly, Isbell could’ve handled this situation better (and more privately) than he did. He could’ve sued the writers and publishers, he could’ve contacted his P.R.O. to see if they could sue for songwriting credit on the song (like Chris Robinson did for Gretchen Wilson’s “Work Hard, Play Harder” song). But he didn’t and now he’ll have the court of public opinion in country music weighing in on the story with the alt-country brigade crying outrage (mainly because many dislike anything to do with ‘mainstream’) while the fans of Dierks will whole-heartedly stand on his side.

Below are the two YouTube sourced versions of the songs discussed in the article.  We’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter in our comment section below.

Note: hat tip to our friends at Farce The Music and NineBullets for leading us to the story and we'll have more updates as they develop.