Does Olivia Dean’s song “I’ve Seen It” sound too much like the classic “Just the Two of Us?”
Mattie Music Group filed a lawsuit, saying that her song has “substantial similarities” with Bill Withers’ Grammy-winning song, NBC News reported.
The lawsuit said that the songs “share musical features” that are “so striking” it could not have been a coincidence, the BBC reported.
Mattie Music Group controls Withers’ catalog.
Co-defendants Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America were alerted to the suit in August. Dean herself is not named in the lawsuit, NBC News said.
The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in federal court in Los Angeles, Rolling Stone reported.
The case does not ask for damages from Dean or her co-writers Basitan Langebæk and Max Wolfgang, according to the BBC.
“Despite receiving notice, defendants continued reproducing, distributing, licensing, publicly performing, and commercially exploiting the infringing work,” the lawsuit said.
To prove that the song was plagerized from Writhers’ Mattie Music Group will have to prove that the writers had heard his original song, the BBC explained.
Dean told W Magazine last year that she wrote the song, which is about the types of love she has experienced, after she “had a lot of red wine.”
“When I heard it back for the first time, I burst into tears. It felt like the loveliest note to end on. Whether it’s within your friends, your family, or just the love that exists in the strangers around you, it’s there, and it’s inside of you, too.”
“I’ve Seen It” has been streamed on Spotify about 248 million times. “Just the Two of Us” has been streamed 948 million streams, the BBC reported.
Listen and compare: