Dua Lipa should face lawsuit claiming she copied ‘Levitating’

AFP

A federal decide in Manhattan stated the British pop star Dua Lipa should face a lawsuit accusing her of copying her 2021 megahit “Levitating” from a 1979 disco music.

US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla on Tuesday stated songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer might attempt to show “substantial similarity” between Levitating and their music Wiggle and Giggle All Night.

Lawyers for Lipa and her document label Warner Records didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.

The lawsuit, filed in March 2022, claimed that Levitating shared “compositional elements” with “Wiggle,” most importantly by duplicating its opening melody.

Defence attorneys argued that it was implausible to imagine that Lipa, 27, heard “Wiggle” earlier than writing Levitating.

Failla agreed however stated the plaintiffs alleged “just enough facts” to argue that the songs have been so “strikingly similar,” together with by sharing a “repetitive rhythm” and “signature melody,” that Lipa will need to have copied theirs.

“The court cannot foreclose the possibility of plaintiffs meeting the undoubtedly high bar of proving striking similarity,” Failla wrote.

Jason Brown, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, in a press release, stated they “have great respect for the artists of today but if their material is used there must be proper attribution and compensation. We look forward to conducting discovery and taking this case to trial.”

Failla’s opinion doesn’t cowl the plaintiffs’ declare that Levitating copied one other music, Don Diablo, to which they owned copyright.

Levitating, from Lipa’s album Future Nostalgia, spent 77 weeks on Billboard’s Hot 100 US singles chart, and was the No. 1 music on Billboard’s 2021 year-end chart.

In June, a federal decide in Los Angeles dismissed a lawsuit accusing Lipa of copying Levitating from a 2017 music by the Florida reggae group Artikal Sound System.

Another lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on July 31 claimed that Lipa by no means obtained permission from the musician Bosko Kante to incorporate his “talk box” recording in remixes of Levitating.