Why did Ariana Grande sign away 90℅ of royalties from 7 Rings? 

On January 18, 2019, Ariana Grande released 7 Rings - the second single from her fifth studio album - Thank U, Next. The track was an instant commercial success, debuting at the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 and spending 33 weeks on the chart. The song topped the record charts in 28 countries.

Having sold over 13.3 million copies by the end of 2019, 7 Rings became one of the best-selling songs in digital history, but Grande's profit in the track's success was surprisingly marginal.

Before the song was released, Ariana Grande's representatives had signed away 90% of the song's royalties to Concord - the company that owned the catalog of Rodgers and Hammerstein. According to the New York Times, it was because Grande's 7 Rings was an extended reinterpretation of My Favorite Things - a track from a musical created by the duo in 1965, called The Sound of Music.

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Ariana Grande's 7 Rings is credited to 10 songwriters, including Rodgers and Hammerstein

The New York Times reported that Ariana Grande's 7 Rings is credited to 10 different writers, one of which is Ari herself.

The others are Victoria Monét, Tayla Parx, Tommy Brown, Michael Foster, Njomza Vitia, Charles Anderson, and Kimberly Krysiuk. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II - the theatre-writing duo who died decades ago - are also credited for the song due to its striking resemblance with a track from a musical they had created.

Here's a line from My Favorite Things that has been repurposed in Grande's 7 Rings:

"Brown paper packages tied up with strings/ these are a few of my favorite things."

Now take a look at its reimagined lyrics in Ari's song:

"Lashes and diamonds, ATM machines/ buy myself all of my favorite things."

The news outlet also reported that Republic Records - the Side to Side singer's music label - signed the deal of 7 Rings' divided royalties to Concord before its release in January 2019.

When Ari's representatives brought the song to Concord, they immediately received a request for 90% royalty ownership, which was accepted "without further negotiation."

According to the New York Times, Jake Wisely, the chief publishing executive of Concord, said in an interview that "Ms. Grande's song wouldn't exist in its current form were it not for My Favorite Things."

While Concord didn't have to file a lawsuit against Ariana Grande's 7 Rings to get 90% of its royalties, another artist filed one in 2021.

Reuters reported that Josh Stone, a hip-hop artist from New York, who goes by the stage name DOT, claimed that the track's hook and rhythmic structure were lifted from his track, You Need It I Got It.

The defendants against Stone's settlement included Ariana Grande, Tommy Brown and 12 others, who said that his song and 7 Rings would be considered two very different songs by listeners and that the artist had no monopoly over an everyday phrase like "I got it".

While a settlement was reached between both parties ultimately, its terms were not disclosed to the media or the public.

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7 Rings isn't Ariana Grande's first song to receive a lawsuit

7 Rings isn't the first Ariana Grande song for which the singer-songwriter has received a lawsuit. In 2016, BBC reported that Alex Gregg, a songwriter, had sued Grande's 2014 track, One Last Time for having the same chorus as the 2011 EDM tune he had written for Skye Stevens - Takes All Night.

Another lawsuit Ari faced over a song was in 2019 for her Sweetener single - God Is A Woman. Newsweek reported that Vladimir Kush, an artist from LA, Nevada, filed a lawsuit against the track's music video, claiming that it had copied the image of a woman in the candle flame from them. The similarities were drawn with the paintings Kush had copyrighted in 1999 and 2000.