Ariana Grande's '7 Rings' Is Earning Hefty Royalties for Rodgers and Hammerstein

The hit new song "7 Rings" has been a strong earner for pop star and Broadway alum Ariana Grande since it was released in January. What fans might not realize, though, is that the song, which reinterprets The Sound of Music's "My Favorite Things," is also a big money maker for the original tune's songwriters, Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, as recently revealed in The New York Times.

Grande's song, which alters original lyrics like "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens" to "Breakfast at Tiffany's and bottles of bubbles," was required to gain approval from the music company Concord, owners of the R&H catalogue, prior to its release. Concord's terms deemed that 90% of the new song's royalties would go to R&H.

Jake Wisely, Concord's chief publishing executive, told the Times that Grande's song "wouldn't exist in its current form were it not for 'My Favorite Things.'"

Theodore S. Chapin, who oversees Rodgers and Hammerstein's copyrights, lent the opinion that Rodgers' late daughter, the Tony-nominated composer Mary Rodgers (Once Upon a Mattress), "would have thought this is pretty kick-ass."

This kind of commercial deal isn't out of the ordinary for the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. In 1979, Rodgers gave the thumbs-up to an ad for Clairol featuring a reworked version of South Pacific's "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair," changed to "I'm gonna wash that gray right outta my hair."

Chapin added, "The fact that Rodgers had agreed to that in his lifetime gave all of us a little license to feel that we should keep an open mind on these kinds of things."