Melbourne singer annoyed Clive Palmer’s party shared her viral video without asking

A Melbourne singer who created a viral lockdown parody video is fuming Clive Palmer’s political party shared it without her permission.

Danielle Matthews’ video has been viewed 2.2 million times since it was posted in September last year, during the city’s extended lockdown.

It features the artist emerging from a bin to sing, “I’ve never bin to me”, a comedic take on ballad, “I’ve never been to me,” made famous by US singer Charlene.

Ms Matthews croons about how she “can’t go to Georgia or California, not even a s**t Bunnings run” and wants to “get away further than 5K, now I stare at walls for fun”.

But the singer was unhappy to discover Mr Palmer’s United Australia Party had shared the video with its 196,000 followers.

“All of a sudden my phone started pinging and I had this barrage of messages in my inbox,” the Choir of Hard Knocks co-artistic director said.

“I’m thinking, ‘What on earth has my music got to do with Clive Palmer?’ That’s how I found out.”

Ms Matthews said the video was downloaded to the political party’s Facebook page without her permission or a credit to her original link.

“It’s a real violation as an artist,” she said.

“It’s like they’re taking a part of you, saying ‘this is what it represents now’. It feels very much like being used.

“I just wish Clive Palmer and people like him would just take artists a bit more seriously and have that respect and understanding this is somebody’s work.”

Mr Palmer’s party has been contacted for comment.

Ms Matthews said she created the video to bring joy and relief to people in a difficult time.

But she now feared people may think she was affiliated with the political party and fuelling anti-lockdown sentiment.

Ms Matthews told her social media followers she was “very unhappy” the video was downloaded by Mr Palmer’s party and re-posted “as if he were the owner”.

“It has been brought to my attention by multiple people this morning that Clive Palmer has posted my video on his socials and in turn using me as the face of his political agenda,” she said.

“I want to make it very clear I did not endorse the use of my video and this video was never created or intended to fuel anti lockdown/anti mask/anti anything sentiment.”

Ms Matthews said she and her followers had reported the post to Facebook.

Her manager has asked the party to remove the post and publicly apologise, but has yet to hear back.