Last week, Sony and Naughty Dog launched a couple of cinematic TV spots for The Last of Us Part II. The trailers featured Ellie singing a cover of copyrighted music that was not properly credited to the cover’s singer and songwriter, Anna-Lynne Williams who goes by the stage name Lotte Kestner. Such oversight led to the companies’ publicly coming under fire, but it seems the matter has since been resolved.
The Last of Us Part II’s Creative Director, Neil Druckmann, addressed the controversy in a recent tweet on his personal Twitter page. Lotte Kestner’s cover of New Order’s “True Faith” did indeed inspire the rendition sung by Ellie. Druckmann admitted as much in the aforementioned post. He additionally apologized and promised to quickly rectify the issue of Kestner not originally receiving credit. The singer later responded with the following post,
So proud this music has found a home in such an amazing project. Thanks to Neil, Naughty Dog and everyone at Sony. https://t.co/FJ2r5Xgbgs
— Lotte Kestner (@lottekestner) June 10, 2020
Interestingly, Naughty Dog was met with criticism around the time of TLoU’s launch window, since the studio failed to properly credit another artist’s work. The issue in question revolved around an in-game map of Boston’s subway system, which had actually been created by cartographer Cameron Booth. This matter, too, was resolved in a seemingly timely fashion, according to a report from Booth at the time.
The Last of Us Part II’s launch is imminent. Naughty Dog’s long-awaited sequel hits stores next week on June 19th.
[Source: Lotte Kestner and Neil Druckmann on Twitter]
