It’s become an annual TV moment and one of the staples of the holiday season, but this year’s John Lewis Christmas advert is at the centre of a row after a little-known band accused the company of copying their arrangement for its feature song. John Lewis has denied all allegations that it lifted the arrangement to Philip Oakey and Georgio Moroder’s 1985 electro-pop classic Together in Electric Dreams, the song featured in its new advert Unexpected Guest, from the alt-folk husband and wife duo, the Portraits. The ad tells the story of a friendship between a boy and an alien visitor, set to a soundtrack of a slowed down version of Together in Electric Dreams, with vocals by 20-year-old singer Lola Young. According to betting firm William Hill, the track is 20-1 in the race to be the UK Christmas No 1. But a similar version of the song was released by the Portraits – Jeremy and Lorraine Millington – as a charity single last Christmas. Theirs was a slowed down, pensive arrangement also using female vocals (the couple’s teenage daughter) and a choir to highlight “the loss and separation and coming together” of the pandemic. The Portraits song was featured on BBC radio and ITV’s This Morning, and its video compiled photographs of those lost during the pandemic. The group say they contacted John Lewis in March 2021 to ask if their arrangement of Together in Electric Dreams would work for the company’s Christmas advert, but received no response. “We sent them a lovely letter giving all the background to the song with an audio file and asked if they would be interested in using it for their Christmas advert, but we never got a reply,” Lorraine Millington told the Guardian. In a post on Facebook, the Portraits added: “Our version was a fundraising song aimed at supporting bereavement and mental health organisations that have needed the money more than ever during the pandemic … We had a (perhaps naive) dream that we could use a future ad by the company with our soundtrack linked to it to maximise the funds going to those charities. But instead, John Lewis went with the idea and produced a version borrowing the ‘feeling’ and many elements of the arrangement of our version, without even letting us know they were planning to do so.” John Lewis said the person the Portraits addressed their email to left the business in June and was not involved in this year’s Christmas ad campaign. A spokesperson said: “There’s no substance to the claims … The creation of advertising and music is carried out solely by our agency and we are unable to read or consider ideas from other external or internal sources.” While the company maintains that many covers of the original version of Together in Electric Dreams are in the public domain, it’s an uncanny example of creative ideas striking different people within a year of each other. The Millingtons said they don’t want to get into an argument with John Lewis but feel that “justice should be done”. They have asked that the company “make a donation to both of the charities and acknowledge our work”. It’s not the first time John Lewis has been accused of borrowing ideas from elsewhere. In 2017, former children’s laureate Chris Riddell accused the company of “help[ing] themselves” to the story from his picture book about a friendly blue monster who appeared similar to the one in their Christmas advert. The Portraits, meanwhile, are now releasing a follow-up Christmas single, a cover in a very similar orchestral and choral style, this time of Ed Sheeran’s Photograph.