Miley Cyrus has been hit with a lawsuit alleging she and co-songwriters Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack copied portions of a Bruno Mars single when they wrote her Grammy-winning global hit “Flowers,” according to Rolling Stone.
According to a lawsuit filed Monday in Los Angeles, Tempo Music Investments claims “Flowers” includes unauthorized “exploitation” of several elements of Mars’ 2013 piano-driven ballad “When I Was Your Man.” The suit also names Sony Music Publishing, Apple, Target, Walmart, and several other companies as defendants accused of distributing “Flowers.”
Tempo owns a percentage of the U.S. copyrights to Mars’ song which it acquired from co-writer Philip Lawrence. Mars, along with co-writers Ari Levine and Andrew Wyatt, are not named as plaintiffs in the suit.
A rep for Cyrus had no comment when contacted by Variety.
The lawsuit additionally notes that Pollack “refused to comment” on the “Flowers’” similarity to Mars’ “When I Was Your Man” in an
interview with Billboard in March 2023. In that same article, Billboard notes Lawrence once said that “When I Was Your Man” was inspired in part by the artistry of Billy Joel.
Although the lyrics to Mars’ song mention flowers, any similarities between the two are not blatantly obvious from casual listens. However, the lawsuit asserts, “Any fan of Bruno Mars’ ‘When I Was Your Man’ knows that Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’ did not achieve all of that success on its own. ‘Flowers’ duplicates numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements of ‘When I Was Your Man,’ including the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, certain bars of the chorus, certain theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions.”
The suit meticulously dissects the melodic and harmonic material, pitch ending pattern, bass-line structure and lyrics of both songs, noting they are “substantially similar,” in particular the opening vocal line from the chorus of “Flowers.”
“It is undeniable based on the combination and number of similarities between the two recordings that ‘Flowers’ would not exist without ‘When I Was Your Man,’” the complaint continues. “With ‘Flowers,’ Cyrus, Hein, and Pollack have created a derivative work of ‘When I Was Your Man’ without authorization.”
The lawsuit seeks damages “in an amount to be determined at trial,” or the maximum of $150,000 per infringement, which could turn out to be a very large total, given the record-breaking streams of “Flowers.”
Source Agencies
