When Hayley decided to end Matthew Good‘s career February 2021 – it also ended an album of music that was complete and ready to be released.

April 2021 Matthew Good was given permission by Steve Kane of Warner Music to give away – for free (not allowed to profit off the tracks) – 3 songs from the unreleased album.

Matthew Good was given a copy of the songs. He claimed to me, that he does not have the other songs, that he threw away his copies – so any future leaked tracks could not come from him.

These 3 tracks were 100% created by Matthew Good and Warne Livesey.

They were only up on his website for a short period of time, for free, to listen to and a Reddit thread about it blew up into a big lot of accusations. Several fans downloaded copies of the song. They are published on YouTube among other pre-released versions of some of the other tracks.

Hayley posted on her IG claiming to have a right to a percentage of all the tracks on the album.

This spawned a big bunch of questions about exactly what Hayley contributed to this unreleased album.

As you can see Reddit was ripe with Hayley’s loyalists, and they couldn’t not comment, specially this Artistic-Pattern-716 (pictured above).

This comment makes me wonder who was leaking it?

All of that is a lot of fun isn’t it?

Matt Good and The Royal City Archers

THE TRIBUS TRACKS (Released on matthewgood.org)

Lost and Found Kids

A Corridor of Trees

Hollis

Those were the three tracks that were put up on the Matthew Good website – for free. Many fans were able to find the direct link or copy these, and they were available and linked in the Reddit forum.

Only a select few people have/had copies of the entire album, and as much as the fans wish to get a hold of them, they are owned by Warner Music.

It will be interesting to see if any further tracks leak.

On February 11, 2021 this statement was released: “Warner Music Canada has seen the recent allegations against Matthew Good and take them very seriously. We have parted ways with Matthew Good.”

The new album Matt Good and The Royal City Archers that was to be released in May 2021 by Matthew Good and it was totally canned. Reportedly a music video for the first single “Pandemic” had all ready been filmed.

The album was to feature songs written by Matthew Good, with Warne Livesey contributing to all the tracks. Most interestingly the album had additional musical collaborations with other musicians. On these tracks – the collaborators each retained 40% rights to their individual song.

with Elevator (Smoke)
with Saukrates (Triage) – yes a rap song!
with Wintersleep (Pandemic)
with Lights (That’s It) – Hayley contributed a melodic beat to this track
Matthew Good Lost and Found Kids
with Dan Mangan (Too Much Emotion)
with Matt Mays (Daylight Actual)
Matthew Good A Corridor of Trees
Matthew Good Hollis

HAYLEY M CLAIMS CREDIT

In an IG post now deleted, Hayley claimed to show an email that gave her 20% writing credit on all the songs. Allegedly Hayley only wrote one bit of the Lights song “That’s It” and she never sang on any of the tracks – Matthew Good claims he was generously gifting her writing credits on the album, to advance her music career.

This is the Instagram post Hayley made – claiming she owned 20% of all the tracks.

Matthew Good refutes Hayley’s IG claim, stating that the email she is showing here, was merely one in a chain of emails that were used to negotiate the rights to the songs. 20% of each song was to go to Warne Livesey – Hayley has whited out his name in the her IG post.

Allegedly some close to the project, who worked on the project, did not agree with Hayley being gifted the right to all the tracks – given that she did not work on them. Future negotiates occurred after the email Hayley showed on her Public Instagram.

The 3 tracks released in April 2021 were 100% solely created by Matthew Good and Warne Livesey without any other individual’s input.

Legally I would assume that Warner Music knew what they were doing when they allegedly okayed Matthew Good to release these 3 tracks – for free.

Also please note, that I was told, each track was written in parts, and then the additional artists listed above, wrote and recorded their parts on their own – in their own studios – and several named the songs they wrote 40% of as well.

After these contributions were recorded, they were mixed into the final track.

None of these artists actually shared a studio space while creating these songs.

In any case, the album is dust.

All I can say is – never give someone credit for something they didn’t do.

In the end you will both look like clowns for it.

^{Updated September 23, 2023 – Originally uploaded December 5th, 2021}