Dua Lipa Is Facing Two Copyright Infringement Lawsuits Over Her Song “Levitating”
If Robin Thicke’s working relationship with Pharrell back in 2013 has taught anyone in the music industry anything, it’s that you should probably spend just as much time on your beat, melody, and lyrics as you do on making sure as hell that you’re not blatantly ripping off someone else’s song. That’s what happened to them with “Blurred Lines,” and it ended with a huge lawsuit and a $5 million judgment awarded to the plaintiffs. The same thing is currently happening to Dua Lipa, except her situation is a little different. Instead of one lawsuit accusing her of copying a previously established song, there are two lawsuits accusing her of such. So yeah, her lawyers have been busy this month.
The song in question is “Levitating,” which you’ve likely heard everywhere from the club to Target. “Levitating” was the fifth single from her 2020 album Future Nostalgia, and has been a big hit for her. It charted in the #1 spot on several Billboard lists and spent 68 weeks on the charts. Future Nostalgia was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2021 (it won for Best Pop Vocal Album). Here it is:
Billboard writes that last week, a Florida reggae group called Artikal Sound System filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Dua Lipa, accusing her of plagiarizing their 2017 song, “Live Your Life.” They claim that she had access to “Live Your Life,” which is to say, it was out there on a released album, and wasn’t just some random demo they recorded for fun in a friend’s basement. The lawsuit also named Warner Records as a defendant, for obvious reasons. Dua Lipa didn’t just record the song; she’s also listed as a writer on the track. Here’s what “Live Your Life” sounds like compared to “Levitating.” I’d tell you to listen closely, but even patients of a hearing clinic could tell you that one of these sounds a little too much like the Great Value version of the other.
Dua Lipa – Levitating (2020) plagiarized Live Your Life by Artikal Sound System pic.twitter.com/mLQu2DK3kF
— ???? (@NoahsMediaAcc) March 2, 2022
The second lawsuit was filed on Friday. Billboard says that it’s also a copyright infringement lawsuit, except this time, the plaintiffs are going way, way back to the 1970s and 80s for their comparisons. Songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer are accusing Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” of ripping off two songs they co-wrote: the 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night,” and 1980 song “Don Diablo.” And I don’t know where their lawyers went to law school, but by the sounds of this lawsuit, it was the American School of Law & Puns.
“Defendants have levitated away plaintiffs’ intellectual property,” lawyers for Brown and Linzer wrote in their complaint. “Plaintiffs bring suit so that defendants cannot wiggle out of their willful infringement.”
Here are those songs compared against Dua, and I don’t want to get involved in this fight, but I will say that just like those puns, this might be a bit of a reach.
Just days after the Artikal Sound System suit, Dua Lipa is now being sued by songwriters L. Russell Brown & Sandy Linzer, who say “Levitating” contains a melody from two songs they co-wrote in the ‘70s, “Wiggle & Giggle All Night” (by Cory Daye) and “Don Diablo” (by Miguel Bosé). pic.twitter.com/rZjYBCqkiG
— No Hipsters Pod (@NoHipstersPod) March 6, 2022
Do all those songs sound similar? Yes! Do they all share common chord progressions? Maybe. But the one big takeaway is that it doesn’t really sound like Dua copied the lyrics from anyone. Although who knows? Maybe a third lawsuit will be filed by a glitter-eyed alien disco star who accuses Dua Lipa of ripping off their #1 hit about floating around Mars and the Milky Way in a rocket with their sugarboo. If that happens, well, Dua might actually be screwed here.
Pic: INSTAR