Imitation Is The Sincerest Form Of Flattery
With the news coming out in September 2024 that Miley Cyrus's song "Flowers" is being sued for copyright infringement, it brings to mind all the other times artists have landed in court for apparently copying other songs. So many of these hit songs surprised us.
"Surfin' USA" By The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys' "Surfin USA" is still an enormous hit, but they eventually had to give songwriting credits to Chuck Berry, whose song "Sweet Little Sixteen" heavily influences the track.
It caused a lot of tension between the Boys and Berry at the time, though Carl Wilson later said the band "ran into Chuck Berry in Copenhagen and he told us he loves 'Surfin' USA'".
"Folsom Prison Blues" By Johnny Cash
"Folsom Prison Blues" is one of Johnny Cash's best songs, and it's also not exactly his song. It takes great inspiration from the 1953 song "Crescent City Blues" by Gordon Jenkins, and Cash paid Jenkins $75,000 for the use.
Heinrich Klaffs, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Whole Lotta Love" By Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin songs are extremely expensive to use in films, so it's a little funny that they had to break their own bank account for "Whole Lotta Love."
Some of the lyrics came from Willie Dixon's "You Need Love," which Blues legend Muddy Waters recorded in 1962. The rock band eventually settled for the rights out of court.
Atlantic Records, Wikimedia Commons
"Papa Don't Preach" By Madonna
Maybe Madonna's papa should have preached to her a little more. Her smash hit "Papa Don't Preach" was sued for copyright infringement of Sam Harris's song "Sugar Don't Bite," which even sounds like the same kind of song, at least from the title. Harris eventually got an undisclosed amount out of court.
chrisweger, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Crocodile Rock" By Elton John
Elton John's "Crocodile Rock" came under fire in 1974, when composer Buddy Kaye sued its songwriters, claiming that they'd taken chords from the (almost equally as famous) song "Speedy Gonzalez".
Although they reached a settlement, one of the songwriters of "Crocodile Rock," Bernie Taupin, later admitted to his own "guilt". As he said, "I wanted it to be a record about all the things I grew up with. Of course it's a rip-off, it's derivative in every sense of the word".
"Come As You Are" By Nirvana
After Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" became a huge hit, the band had trouble deciding what their next single would be. Even though "Come as You Are" seemed like the obvious choice, there was one big thing wrong. Kurt Cobain himself was worried that it sounded too much like the song "Eighties" by the band Killing Joke.
They released it anyway, and even though they took no official legal action, Killing Joke were extremely upset as they watched the(ir) song climb the charts.
"Ice Ice Baby" By Vanilla Ice
Okay, it's likely you know that "Ice Ice Baby" by Vanilla Ice samples the addictive bassline of Queen and David Bowie's "Under Pressure". But did you know that the writers of "Under Pressure" received zero royalties until after the Vanilla Ice song became a hit? How did anyone think they could get away with that...
YoTuT, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Creep" By Radiohead
Yep, even indie favorites Radiohead have some skeletons in their hit-writing closet. To be fair, the band never planned to release their best-selling song "Creep." When they did, it was immediately clear to Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood, writers of the 1972 song "The Air That I Breathe," that Radiohead had taken liberal use of their ditty.
Eventually, Hammond and Hazlewood got songwriting credits and royalties.
Nicolas Lœuillet, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" By Rod Stewart
"Da Ya Think I'm Sexy" is the anthem you can't help but dance to, but Brazilian musician Jorge Ben Jor heard it and was none too pleased. He claimed the chorus was from his own song "Taj Mahal," and Rod Stewart seemed to agree, settling the case "amicably".
Steward later admitted he had committed "unconscious plagiarism" of the song after hearing it while attending Carnival in Rio in 1978.
Rodstewartonair, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
"All You Need Is Love" By The Beatles
The Beatles very much believed in the '60s idea of music as a free-for-all, and the coda to "All You Need Is Love" contains snippets of a bunch of songs, from the French national anthem to Bach to their own songs. It also includes some of Glen Miller's "In the Mood".
Miller, though, didn't much share their philosophy, and he got royalties for the use of his song.
Eric Koch, CC0, Wikimedia Commons
"Girlfriend" By Avril Lavigne
Avril Lavigne's 2007 earworm "Girlfriend" ended up in court over copyright claims after the band the Rubinoos believed she had copied their song "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend". Musicologists couldn't even agree on whether the songs were highly similar or very different.
Lavigne believed her lyrics in particular were blameless, as they used common words that appeared in many songs, such as the Rolling Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud". Nonetheless, she settled out of court.
Rosa Casapullos, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Yeah 3x" By Chris Brown
When Chris Brown's song "Yeah 3x" hit the radio, one celebrity was stunned. DJ Calvin Harris was certain the track was sampling his song "I'm Not Alone" and tweeted: "Choked on my cornflakes when I heard new Chris Brown single this morning. Do you know what I mean?"
Although Brown hadn't heard the song, his producer apparently had, and Brown quickly gave Harris a songwriting credit.
Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Uptown Funk" By Bruno Mars And Mark Ronson
Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson's "Uptown Funk" has so many infringement claims, it's dizzying. Created during a freestyle session, the song was later dinged for copying bands such as the Gap Band, Collage, and rap group the Sequence, among others. The Gap Band got 17% of the royalties, while Collage got a settlement.
By the end of it all, though, people were even claiming the song cribbed from the theme song to the BBC children's show The Really Wild Show...a comparison even Mark Ronson acknowledged as fair.
Kevin Mazur/MTV1415, Getty Images
"Stairway To Heaven" By Led Zeppelin
Rock band Spirit claimed that "Stairway to Heaven" was taken from their own song "Taurus". Although their case failed in court thanks to some complex arguments about what counts as infringement, the band think they know the truth.
In the liner notes to a re-issue of the album that "Taurus" is on, Spirit wrote: "People always ask me why 'Stairway to Heaven' sounds exactly like 'Taurus', which was released two years earlier ... [Led Zeppelin] opened up for us on their first American tour". Ouch.
Bruce Alan Bennett, Shutterstock
"Shake It Off" By Taylor Swift
After Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" became an inescapable hit, songwriters Sean Hall and Nate Butler brought their earlier song "Playas Gon' Play" to the courts, which contained the lyrics: "Playas they gon' play, and haters they gonna hate / Ballers they gon' ball, shot callers they gonna call".
While it certainly does read a lot like Swift's song, the courts dismissed the case on the grounds that the words were too common.
"Down Under" By Men At Work
"Down Under" was released in 1981 by the Australian group Men at Work and for decades, no one quite realized it copied the children's song "Kookaburra" by Marion Sinclair. It came out in a bizarre way. The quiz show Spicks and Specks innocently asked "What children's song is contained in the song 'Down Under'?"
Once people saw that, calls flooded into the owner of the rights to "Kookaburra," and 5% of the royalties backdated to 2002 went out of Men at Work's coffers. Then again, Men at Work only ever intended the homage as a "musical joke".
"Stay With Me" By Sam Smith
Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" is an incredible song...and it gave a leg up to another hit song, Sam Smith's "Stay With Me". Petty's publisher first noticed the similarities in the melody, and approached Smith for 12.5% of the songwriting credits.
Incredibly enough, Smith claimed they'd never even heard "I Won't Back Down" before!
"Bittersweet Symphony" By The Verve
"Bittersweet Symphony" just might be the most tragic song on our list. Sampling the Rolling Stones song "Last Time," The Verve's record label did the right thing from the start and acquired the rights...then it all went so wrong. The label got permission from another label, but the Stones' manager Allen Klein also had composition rights, and they missed asking him.
What resulted was a brutal lawsuit that saw The Verve relinquish all royalties, change the writing credits to Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, and miss out on literally millions of dollars when the song became a massive hit. As one writer of "Last Time" (the original song) put it, "The whole thing just makes one a bit sick, really".
But there is a silver lining: In 2019, The Verve re-brokered a deal that got the rights reverted back to them, thanks in part to some generosity from Jagger and Richards.
Maxcoles135, Wikimedia Commons
"Good 4 U" By Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo's pop-girl punk is a breath of fresh air...though maybe "fresh" isn't the right term. In 2021, news broke that the band Paramore received songwriting credits and royalties for Rodrigo's hit "Good 4 U," following its similarities to their song "Misery Business".
Rodrigo responded publicly to this by saying, "I think it's disappointing to see people take things out of context and discredit any young woman's work".
"Hello, I Love You" By The Doors
When the Doors put out "Hello, I Love You," even their keyboardist admitted it sounded "a lot like a Kinks song". As it happened, that Kinks song was the equally iconic "All Day and All of the Night".
Still, the band didn't care too much; Kinks frontman Ray Davies only said, "Rather than sue them, can we just get them to own up?" and was happy when Doors leader Jim Morrison did exactly that.
Joel Brodsky, Wikimedia Commons
"Come Together" By The Beatles
In another case of The Beatles borrowing quite liberally from others, "Come Together" doesn't just accidentally sound like Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me". While tooling around in the studio, John Lennon deliberately used the earlier song as the base for his new tune, and even sung the same lyrics in parts. They eventually settled with Berry out of court.
Iberia Airlines, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"I'll Be Missing You" By P Diddy
P Diddy's "I'll Be Missing You" very obviously samples The Police's 1983 hit single "Every Breath You Take"...but despite this, no one secured permission before releasing the song. In fact, no one even told the members of The Police; guitarist Andy Summers said, "I found out about it after it was on the radio".
Songwriter Sting quickly sued, and now reportedly receives 100% of the royalties until 2053.
"Blurred Lines" By Robin Thicke
In 2013, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing Robin Thicke's anthem "Blurred Lines," and Marvin Gaye's estate didn't like it. That summer, they sued for copyright, as they felt the song stole the "feel" and "sound" of Gaye's "Got to Give it Up".
Since "feel" and "sound" are inexact, it was a controversial claim. But that wasn't the strangest part. On the stand, Robin Thicke confessed he was inebriated when he went into the studio the day he recorded the song, and had little to do with its creation. Instead, he blamed producer Pharrell Williams.
When the court ruled in favor of the Gaye estate, many musicians protested the vague "feel" allegations—but both Williams and Thicke had to pay up anyway, to the tune of millions of dollars.
"Sorry" By Nicki Minaj
When Nicki Minaj interpolated Tracy Chapman's song "Baby Can I Hold You" for her song "Sorry," she actually thought the sample was from another song entirely. Then, when Chapman refused to give clearance for the song, Minaj had to leave it off her upcoming album. But things changed very quickly.
Soon, the song leaked just after the album's release—a "coincidence" Tracy Chapman was very suspicious of. She sued Minaj, claiming she had purposely released the song after not getting the answer she wanted. Minaj ended up giving Chapman $450,000 to avoid further drama.
Philip Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Brutal" By Olivia Rodrigo
Olivia Rodrigo's 2021 song "Brutal" got plagiarism accusations when people noticed its guitar riff was akin to the one in Elvis Costello's 1978 song "Pump It Up". Costello didn't mind though. After all, his song was already influenced by Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues".
As Costello tweeted at the time, "This is fine by me...It's how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand-new toy. That's what I did".
Walt Disney Television, Flickr
"It's A Man's Man's Man's World" By James Brown
Ironically, James Brown's "It's a Man's Man's Man's World" took its ideas from a woman. In 1966, Clamike Records sued Brown for infringement of the Betty Newsome song "It's a Man's World (But What Would He Do Without a Woman)". They ended up getting a third of the royalties for Brown's song.
ABC Television, Wikimedia Commons
"I'd Do Anything For Love" By Meatloaf
Sometimes it seems ridiculous that anyone would try to get away with claiming a song is completely original when it's obviously not. When Meatloaf's ultimate power ballad "I'd Do Anything for Love" came out, John Dunmore Sinclair knew immediately it was based on his song "I'd Do Anything for You," and settled out of court.
christopher simon, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Who Do You Love" By Drake
In 2013, the rapper Rappin' 4-Tay tweeted that Drake's verse on "Who Do You Love" copied his own verse on his 1994 single "Playaz Club". Drake ended up paying the older rapper a smooth $100,000.
"Viva La Vida" By Coldplay
Before the Miley Cyrus-Bruno Mars controversy, there was Coldplay's "Viva La Vida". The song was everywhere in 2008, and it wasn't long before musician Joe Satriani claimed it cribbed from his song "If I Could Fly".
Coldplay denied any intentional copying, and claimed anything similar was accidental. The case was dismissed, though they may have settled out of court.
"Photograph" By Ed Sheeran
In 2016, Ed Sheeran and his song "Photograph" got sued for an incredible $20 million dollars, with the songwriters of Matt Cardle's "Amazing" claiming Sheeran owed a lot to their song. Because the lawsuit was settled out of court, we can only imagine what that final payout was...
"Emotions" By Mariah Carey
When Mariah Carey's "Emotions" came out in 1991, people glommed on quickly to the fact it was highly borrowed from "The Best of My Love" by....none other than the band The Emotions. They settled out of court.
"Whatever" By Oasis
BritPop band Oasis are no strangers to controversy, and their song "Whatever" brought plenty. Fellow Englishman Neil Innes sued the band for copying his song "How Sweet to Be an Idiot," and he eventually got a settlement and a songwriting credit.
The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill By Lauryn Hill
This one is a strange one. While making her landmark record The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Lauryn Hill worked with the musical group New Ark. But after the album was released, New Ark believed she hadn't given them sufficient credit, and claimed plagiarism on 13 of the album's tracks. They eventually settled.
Tore Sætre, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Outlaw Pete" By Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen's "Outlaw Pete" from 2009 borrows from (surprisingly enough) Kiss's 1979 hit "I Was Made for Lovin' You". Still, Kiss never pursued legal action. Why? They respected Springsteen too much.
Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, Picryl
"Party All The Time" By The Black Eyed Peas
The Black Eyed Peas album The E.N.D. suffered multiple copyright complaints from many quarters. In particular, record producer Adam Freeland claimed their song "Party All the Time" took the beat from his work "Mancry". They settled out of court.
Aj.duplessis, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
"Shape Of You" By Ed Sheeran
This is one we personally never saw coming. Ed Sheeran's "Shape of You" actually interpolates TLC's classic R&B hit "No Scrubs". In fact, Sheeran was open from the beginning that "No Scrubs" influenced him, and negotiations for royalties and credits to the songwriters began even before "Shape of You" was released.
"Starboy" By The Weeknd
The Weeknd worked with Daft Punk on his hit "Starboy," but there may have been a third, silent collaborator on the dance hit: Yasmin Mohamed is currently claiming copyright infringement for their song "Hooyo".
Christian Bertrand, Shutterstock
"Flowers" By Miley Cyrus
When "Flowers" by Miley Cyrus became a bone-shaking hit, everyone knew that it was referencing Bruno Mars's "If I Was Your Man". After all, the songs have similar melodies and harmonies. Plus, where Mars sings "I should have bought you flowers and held your hand," Cyrus' divorce anthem responds, “I can buy myself flowers and I can hold my own hand".
What did surprise people was when Tempo Records, who had acquired a share of "If I Was Your Man" in 2020, sued Cyrus for infringement this year, in 2024. Cyrus and her team may argue fair use, but the jury is quite literally still out.
"Ghostbusters" By Ray Parker Jr
"Ghostbusters" is such a feel-good theme song, it's hard to believe it has such a bitter backstory. After Ghostbusters came out, Huey Lewis (of Huey Lewis and the News) sued singer Ray Parker Jr for copying the bassline for the theme music from his song "I Want a New Drug".
Though the case was settled out of court, the feud didn't end there. The case had a confidentiality agreement attached to it that meant Lewis couldn't discuss it. So when he brought it up in a 2001 episode of VH1's Behind the Music, Parker—still testy about the lawsuit even decades later—was quick to sue him right back. As he said, "I got a lot of money out of that".
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