Dua Lipa is facing a second copyright infringement lawsuit over her song “Levitating,” less than a week after a Florida reggae band sued the singer for alleged plagiarism, Billboard reports.
Songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer claim that the opening melody to the hit single, the longest-running song ever to reach the top ten by an artist on the US Billboard Hot 100, is a “duplicate” of the melody of their 1979 song Wiggle and Giggle All Night and their 1980 song Don Diablo.
“Defendants stole the intellectual property of the plaintiffs,” lawyers for Brown and Linzer wrote in a tongue-in-cheek complaint. “Plaintiffs sue so that defendants cannot evade willful infringement.”
The songwriters noted interviews with Lipa in which they said she “admitted to deliberately emulating previous eras” and “drawing inspiration” from period music for the “retro” sound of her 2020 album Future Nostalgia.
Dua Lipa: levitation – video
Their lawsuit alleges that the “signature tune” from the intro to Levitating copies a similar part of their songs, and cites the popularity of this section of Levitating on TikTok as a key to its success.
“Because video creators often cut off already-short snippets of audio on TikTok, the signature tune often makes up 50% or more of these viral videos.”
Named in the costume were Lipa, her label Warner Music Group, and rapper DaBaby, who appeared on the remix of the song along with other songwriters and producers. “In search of nostalgic inspiration, the defendants copied the plaintiffs’ creation without attribution,” Brown and Linzer said.
Last week, Lipa was sued by Florida-based band Artikal Sound System, who said Levitating was so similar to their 2017 song Live Your Life that it was “highly unlikely that Levitating was created independently.”
Lipa did not respond to any of the demands. The Guardian contacted the singer’s representatives.