Hipgnosis acquires songwriter Joel Little's catalogue

Music intellectual property investor Hipgnosis Songs Fund has acquired the music catalogue of Grammy Award-winning songwriter, producer and musician Joel Little, it announced on Friday.

The FTSE 250 company said Little was recently presented with his fourth APRA-AMCOS ‘One Million List’ award for Taylor Swift's hit Me!, following his previous honours for Young Dumb & Broke by Khalid, Whatever It Takes by Imagine Dragons and Royals by Lorde.

“Joel is one of the most important songwriters in the world today,” said Merck Mercuriadis, founder of Hipgnosis Songs Fund and its advisor, The Family Music.

“More than eight years on from the iconic song that is Royals, he has continued to deliver massive hits for Lorde, Taylor Swift, Khalid, Imagine Dragons and many more.

“His songs are amongst the most streamed songs of the last 10 years amassing more than 15 billion streams globally.”

Hipgnosis said he is best known for his collaboration with Lorde, co-writing and producing both her debut EP The Love Club, as well as her first album, Pure Heroine, and for co-writing her second album, Melodrama.

In 2014, Little co-wrote and produced a number of songs on the soundtrack for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1, which was curated by Lorde, including the lead single Yellow Flicker Beat. He then reunited with Lorde for her 2017 US number one album Melodrama, which was named by Rolling Stone in its ‘500 Greatest Albums of all Time’ chart, co-writing lead single Green Light.

Following that, in 2019 Little collaborated with Taylor Swift, co-writing and producing four songs on her global number one and multi-platinum album Lover, including three of the singles Me!, You Need to Calm Down and The Man.

In addition to his work with Lorde and Taylor Swift, Little has worked with artists including Ellie Goulding, Imagine Dragons, Shawn Mendes, Khalid, Sam Smith, James Bay and Jonas Brothers.

Hipgnosis said in total, Joel Little's songs have been streamed more than 15 billion times.

“I feel incredibly grateful for my career in songwriting up to this point,” said Joel Little.

“It's really nice to know that these songs will be so well taken care of by Merck and his team of passionate music people.

“Hipgnosis have big plans and I'm very excited to see how far they can champion the cause for all songwriters in the coming years.”

At 0822 BST, shares in Hipgnosis Songs Fund were up 0.26% at 124.73p.