Cledus T. Judd says Sony Music ordered his Ella Langley parody pulled

Cledus T. Judd says he has been told to take down Meet Her, his parody of Ella Langley's No. 1 country hit Be Her, from every platform carrying it. Writing on Facebook, he said Sony Music's New York office messaged his team with the request.

"It caught me by surprise and I was shocked," he said. The song had been out since August 14, with a video shot in the style of Langley's own, and lyrics that praise her rather than mock her.

The numbers were small. Taste of Country reports the track had drawn more than 5,000 views on YouTube and about 1,500 streams on Spotify, which makes the takedown a matter of principle rather than money.

Judd said the response from his own audience had been unusually quiet on criticism, with most people arguing that any artist who gets parodied should take it as a compliment. He declined to attack Langley, saying she apparently wanted nothing to do with it and that bashing people is not in his nature.

He has been making country parodies for more than 30 years, with I Love NASCAR, his version of Toby Keith's I Love This Bar, still the best known. This is the second time a parody has caused friction: he has said Garth Brooks objected to In Another Size, his take on In Another's Eyes, worrying the two songs might compete for the same Grammy. Judd released it anyway and Brooks won.

By his own account he was on Sony at the time of that earlier incident. He told fans to enjoy the video over the weekend because the song would come down from iTunes and his social channels on the Monday, and said he was ridiculously disappointed, both professionally and personally.

He ended the video with a sigh and a line about moving on to the next one. The takedown follows our earlier coverage of the parody itself, and Langley has had a strong year in country, including an extended No. 1 run on MusicRow's songwriter chart.