Statement from Jolyon Petch
Like everything, there are two sides to every story.
Dreams was never released without Reigan’s consent. And we had come to an agreement to credit her.
Over the lockdown, Reigan & I had worked on a number of covers under the same commercial terms. Reigan was aware her vocals were a paid session, to be released and at no time have I ever received an invoice from her that stated “Demo”. Reigan was never concerned with any of these covers, never asked to be credited, and only in the past 7 weeks has Reigan raised it with me with the success of Dreams, and well after I had paid Reigan what was agreed upon last year.
We did a single together called Holding On which Reigan co-wrote and was paid for her session and registered as a song writer. She agreed to be uncredited on Holding On.
With Dreams and the other covers we recorded, Reigan was paid for a session (I can’t credit Reigan for writing Dreams, as I didn’t write it either, so I have no claim to that). We even discussed working further on singles after Dreams to which Reigan sent me 4 additional toplines.
I have gone onto credit Reigan in a number of radio interviews and was keen to involve her more across Dreams. I’ve taken Reigan’s calls and responded to her messages right away including reaching out a month ago to try and further resolve this without everyone expending more in legal bills, to which Reigan’s reply was “I think its best to leave coms, lawyers to lawyer”.
The past few weeks I have been the target of Reigan’s “followers” which have now escalated to death threats. I’m sure you can understand why I had to block people as no one should ever receive death threats or abuse online.
At every stage over the past few months we have been trying to work with Reigan and her legal team to come to an agreement, accommodating precisely her recent demands (including ongoing royalties and feature credit) even though a deal was clearly made last year. We thought we’d reached an amicable commercial resolution 2 weeks ago- so that she would be recognised at the ARIAs, across DSPs and YouTube, but we have been waiting for Reigan to sign the agreement.
So I’m really surprised Reigan took this path on the eve of the ARIA’s when we had already agreed to settle this matter.