Vampire Weekend Settle Lawsuit with 'Contra' Model

Courtesy Amazon.com

Vampire Weekend and their label XL Records have settled a lawsuit with Ann Kirsten Kennis, the woman who appeared on the cover of their 2010 album Contra. Kennis had claimed that she did not provide consent to appear on the record sleeve, and that the photographer, Tod Brody, had forged her model release when the Polaroid shot was taken back in the Eighties. Kennis has won an undisclosed settlement and the case was dismissed by a federal court in Los Angeles.

The band and XL are currently in the process of suing Brody for misrepresenting his rights to the photo, which he licensed to them for $5,000. Brody's attorneys dropped out of the case in June, mainly due to his failure to pay his legal bills. The photographer is now representing himself in the case.

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Song Stories

“Baby Got Back”

Sir Mix-a-Lot | 1992

While watching a Budweiser commercial during the Super Bowl, Sir Mix-a-Lot thought the skinny female models in the ad didn’t represent reality. So he wrote this ode to ample bottoms, featuring its famous to-the-point lyric: “I like big butts and I cannot lie.” MTV banished the video, featuring shaking booties and sexually suggestive fruit, to 9 p.m. or later. “I thought my career was over,” he told Rolling Stone. “Then I called Rick Rubin, and I told him the video was banned, and he was like, 'Great!' We sold another 2 million records.”

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