Sam Smith and Normani sued for “obvious” copyright infringement on collaboration

nme.com:

Sam Smith and Normani copied elements of a song on their hit collaboration, ‘Dancing With A Stranger.’In a complaint filed in a Los Angeles federal court last week (March 4), songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi allege that the pair’s song has the “same” title, chorus and composition as a song they wrote.

The song in question was published on Vincent’s YouTube and Spotify channels back in 2017.The complaint, which was obtained by Rolling Stone, read: “The hook/chorus in both songs — the most significant part and artistic aspect of these works — contains the lyrics ‘dancing with a stranger’ being sung over a nearly identical melody and musical composition.”The lawsuit goes on to show a side-by-side comparison of the two songs and further alleges that the track’s accompanying videos are also similar.It claims that “both videos consist of a girl performing interpretive dance alone in a minimalist studio, interspersed with shots of the male vocalist.”It adds: “A girl dancing alone is not an obvious visual theme for a music video titled ‘Dancing With a Stranger,’ tending to dispel any notion that this similarity is a coincidence…When the extraordinary musical similarity between the songs is also factored in, it becomes even more apparent that it is impossible that the infringing composition and sound recording were independently created.”The filing goes on to allege that Smith, Normani and their respective teams had access to the song through record label ‘Thrive Records’ who they claim had been “extremely interested in using plaintiff’s song for another artist,” though “the deal never went through.”It continues: “Another suspicious coincidence is that the call sheet for plaintiff’s music video.