Dua Lipa denies new allegations of plagiarism of her hit 'Levitating'

Dua Lipa is one of the many names I see in random articles.

I took a second to hear what the fuss is all about and realized I lost a valuable second of my life.

Not really different from the video-driven pop from the 80's. Just mindless teen "feel good" millennial/Gen Z music that sells millions of downloads, with a good portion ending up in her bank account.

One’s indifference to or lack of fondness for an artist is irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I have no fondness for Dua Lipa.  It’s entirely possible that this plagiarism occurred during one of her sessions completely without her knowledge. 

What I am not indifferent to is legal precedent for songwriters.

When an artist may receive adjudication that mandates a multimillion-dollar fine on completely bogus copyright infringement charges and, conversely, an artist may plagiarize with impunity, these are serious problems for anyone concerned about justice for songwriters.

There are many instances where an artist will take a fully formed song (perhaps even use the original release’s backing tracks), record original vocals/lyrics for this song and release it under a new title. The artist then avoids copyright infringement by crediting the original authors as well.  The original writers get royalties for this release.

One time my sister showed me a Rihanna song. I liked it.  My reaction was, “huh, I didn’t know Rihanna made cool songs.”  I showed it to a friend and he said, “this is a Tame Impala song.”  Unbeknownst to me, Rihanna had taken the entire Tame Impala song and simply added her own vocal/lyric.  The track credited the Tame Impala writers.  
 

I’m as big a stickler for originality as anybody. Personally, I generally feel that if someone wants to do a cover, they should just do a cover.  However morally dubious I may feel the above scenario to be (exploiting the ignorance of one’s audience - the majority of listeners are not scouring the liner notes, taking account of the small-print writing credits) it is not illegal as it credits the original authors and those writers receive royalties from the release.

The Dua Lipa people could have chosen to just do a cover or at least release the song with a different title while still crediting the original writers.  They chose neither.  It’s simply out-and-out plagiarism.

@tylermunns, very nice post!

Who?

Rick Beato used software to play both songs simultaneously so that the tempos would match perfectly without pitch-shifting (the tempos were’t all that different to begin with).  On the chorus, it was difficult to tell there were two songs playing simultaneously.

It is the same key, same chord progression (Bm7-F#M7-Em7 - for some reason the Dua Lipa version awkwardly returns to the “I” chord one bar early…perhaps a lazy/clumsy attempt by the author to skirt a potential copyright suit?) with an extremely similar percussion track, exact same vibe, truly the same “idea” (a liberal use of the word) as the Artikal Sound System song.

While these similarities do not make a valid copyright infringement case in and of themselves, the fact that they all exist in concert with the EXACT same vocal melody (even similar lyrics) of the original song ends any debate as to whether the Dua Lipa people engaged in plagiarism.

Rick noted that because there are several people credited as songwriter (amazing for such a dirt-brained, primitive, 3-chord song) it is possible that the plagiarist brought the song in as though it was an original idea, and the other writers contributed further (again, how much more ‘contribution’ three more people could have made is beyond me) without knowing the “germ” was plagiarized. Interesting to consider how this dynamic could be parsed out in a court of law.

I would think the prosecution would have a slam-dunk here if there wasn’t the terrible ruling in favor of the Marvin Gaye estate only 3 years back.

In that case, the Marvin Gaye estate had no argument. They said Pharrell and Robin Thicke plagiarized the “groove” of Marvin’s, “Got to Give it Up.” A ridiculous claim.  And they won. Amazing.  
I am an enormous Marvin Gaye fan and have no desire whatsoever to defend Pharrell or Alan Thicke’s progeny (no disrespect to Alan Thicke).  Marvin’s song has a completely different vocal melody, a completely different chord progression and lyrics.  The idea that “groove” can be copyrighted is patently ludicrous. Yet, somehow, it worked.
A terrible precedent for songwriters.

I’m curious to see how this case plays out.
In this case, the prosecution is sitting on a sure thing if they don’t screw it up, or some other travesty of justice occurs.

Que lastima

First question, who is Dua Lipa?  Second question, who cares?

Worthless present day pop. I saw her perform on Jimmy Kimmel. Five minutes was plenty!

This isn't on my old man radar