Just months after celebrating her first-ever Grammy win for the hit song “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus now faces a federal copyright lawsuit. On September 16th, 2024, the singer was accused of copying elements from Bruno Mars’s 2013 song “When I Was Your Man.” The complaint, filed by Tempo Music Investments LLC, targets Cyrus and over two dozen defendants, alleging “unauthorized reproduction, distribution, and exploitation” of Mars’s song. Fans quickly noticed that Bruno Mars is not directly involved in the lawsuit. As a fellow artist and having faced his own copyright infringement suit for “Uptown Funk,” Mars likely understands the inevitability of creative parallels within the industry. Still, this case is slightly different as the parallels between the songs are apparent to listeners and do not exclusively relate to background chords. Nonetheless, Bruno Mars himself seems to take no issue with “Flowers’s” responsive nature to his song.
Most artists, especially the successful ones, are familiar with this type of lawsuit. Cyrus herself has faced a suit of this nature for accusations that her hit song “We Can’t Stop” bore similarities to the 1988 song “We Run Things.” This past case, like most of this sort, ended in a settlement. The reputational harms and burdens of litigation makes this an area where settlement is likely and thus all the more tempting for part owners of songs to go after the artists.
Although these cases rarely make it to a jury, one famous exception demonstrated the debilitating effects of these suits. Ed Sheeran spent eight years litigating against allegations of copyright infringement of his song “Thinking Out Loud” for musical similarities to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.” Prior to a verdict in Sheeran’s favor, the beloved artist said he would quit music in the case of a jury verdict finding his song to have been a copy. Sheeran maintained his independent process in creating his famous song, which relied on chords used in myriad songs. Sheeran expressed that continuing to make music with pure intention is a fruitless labor if cases of this sort consistently plague the industry and creative expression.
The reason so many of these cases do, in fact, settle is because they are not meritless claims. In the case of Miley Cyrus’s “Flowers,” there will likely be no exception to the rule. However, it is worth considering whether the barrier to entry for these cases should be higher. Should we allow a greater threshold of creative parallels in music within our legal system? On the one hand, it is essential to protect the work of smaller artists from being exploited by more prominent names in the industry. However, the most frequent actors are larger corporate entities going after artists for a slice of their profits and not complaints from artists themselves.
For the most celebrated musicians, the real impact of a lawsuit isn’t in its financial toll but in the chilling effect it imposes on creativity and innovation. Artists of all calibers are left second-guessing if their new idea is legally theirs. This case does not take away from Cyrus’s incredible success and first-time recognition at the Grammy Awards but does invite a greater conversation on how copyright law may stifle artistic expression.