Singer Dua Lipa beats lawsuit claiming she copied her Levitating hit from 1979 song
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
A judge said the plaintiffs failed to show “substantial similarity” between Dua Lipa's Levitating and their song Wiggle And Giggle All Night.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Follow topic:
NEW YORK – Dua Lipa won the dismissal on March 27 of a lawsuit in Manhattan accusing the English-Albanian pop star of copying her 2020 megahit Levitating from a 1979 disco song.
US District Judge Katherine Polk Failla said American songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer failed to show “substantial similarity” between Levitating and their song Wiggle And Giggle All Night, though some listeners could hear similarities.
The plaintiffs alleged that Levitating copied its “signature melody” from Wiggle and another song to which they held a copyright.
But the judge found that melody unprotectable in the light of the federal appeals court’s decision in November 2024 that English singer Ed Sheeran’s song Thinking Out Loud (2014) did not illegally copy
Judge Failla also found several other alleged similarities between Levitating and Wiggle were commonplace, having appeared in Mozart and Rossini operas, Gilbert and Sullivan operettas, and the song Stayin’ Alive (1977) by British-Australian pop group Bee Gees.
“A musical style, defined by plaintiffs as ‘pop with a disco feel’, and a musical function, defined by plaintiffs to include ‘entertainment and dancing’, cannot possibly be protectable,” she wrote.
To hold otherwise, Judge Failla said, would “completely foreclose the further development of music in that genre or for that purpose”.
Mr Jason Brown, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said they plan to appeal.
“This case has always been about standing up for the enduring value of original songwriting,” Mr Brown, who is L. Russell Brown’s nephew, said in an e-mail.
Lawyers for Lipa, her label Warner Records and other defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
They called it implausible to believe Lipa, 29, heard Wiggle before writing Levitating, and said the plaintiffs could not “monopolise one of the most commonplace and rudimentary elements of music: The use of a minor scale”.
L. Russell Brown’s other songs include American pop group Tony Orlando And Dawn’s Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round The Ole Oak Tree (1973) and Knock Three Times (1970), while Linzer’s songs include American band The Four Seasons’ Let’s Hang On! (1965) and Working My Way Back To You (1966).
Levitating, from Lipa’s album Future Nostalgia, was the No. 1 song on Billboard’s 2021 year-end chart. REUTERS
