You can just play the actual song the other person wrote. You’ve heard of the concept of covers right?

I don’t need anyone’s permission to record my own version of any song, and I can change the words or otherwise rearrange it however I want.

I might owe them publishing royalties but that’s an entirely different conversation.

The article implies it’s a grey area but that’s not actually true, it’s not really borderline at all, at least not for creating the songs. Al could have completely ignored the artists opinion he just chose not to.

With that said, the issue of a sync license could be a little more complex, and maybe is what the article is referring to. That could have some impact on the ability to create videos, though that would generally seem to hold up well to a fair use defense.