The world of house music is filled with examples of singers being treated appallingly – and there’s simply no other way to put it. One of the earlier examples was the legendary Martha Wash being scrubbed out by Italian outfit Black Box, despite being the singer – heaven forbid that the audience were to see a more full-figured lady on a music video, eh?

Today, Ears To The House regrets that we have to report yet another potential instance to add onto an already large pile. This one concerns a release on Wu Records, an Italian dance label founded by Claudio Caccini in 1997 – and as it happens, it’s Caccini himself who released a song called “Reach Out” in June.

The song proudly boasts about featuring Rowetta on the vocals. You might know her from her work with Manchester band Happy Mondays from the early 90s – although, of course, her discography is much more extensive than this. But there’s just one rather big problem – Rowetta did not authorise the use of her vocal on this project.

She told everyone this news in the comments section of a Facebook post by Claudio Caccini – and across her social media platforms. Here’s just a flavour of some of the responses…

She furthermore claims that when she contacted Caccini to try and resolve the matter, instead of receiving a response, she was simply blocked. We also understand that takedown requests have been made to a number of different outlets – the song remains available at the time of publication.

Ears To The House reached out to Caccini yesterday for comment. No response has been received at the time of publication, but he has been on Facebook insisting everything was done correctly. One of his comments reads…

“Hey Rowetta we will show you the regular contract we signed with the owner of the label . Usually the label doesn’t asks the singer for authorization if it owns the master!”

Which label he’s referring to, he doesn’t say…