Last week, (March 2nd) it was reported that pop sensation Dua Lipa was being sued by Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System; the group claimed that in reference to their own track “Live Your Life”, it was “highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently.” Despite the claims, the suit contains little in the way of details about how or why she allegedly copied them, but it goes to say that she did have access to the song. But now, another lawsuit has come through the works; as songwriters L Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer argue the track is an alleged “Duplicate” of their 1979 song ‘Wiggle and Giggle All Night’ AND their 1980 song ‘Don Diablo’. You can listen to Lipa’s track below.
Brown and Linzer went online to address the complaints, stating that, “Defendants have levitated away plaintiffs’ intellectual property, plaintiffs bring suit so that defendants cannot wiggle out of their willful infringement.” No pun intended. They also go on to explain how Lipa highlighted in numerous interviews that her album (Future Nostalgia, obviously) was intentionally emulating the sounds of a different era. They also go on to explain that Lipa’s success with the song came through the shortness of the allegedly infringed hook and its relation to the inherently short nature of any viral TikTok breakout, “Because video creators frequently truncate the already brief snippets of sound on TikTok, the signature melody often comprises 50% or more of these viral videos.”. See ‘Wiggle and Giggle All Night’ below to make up your own mind.
The case is set to go against Lipa, her record label (Warner Music Group), a host of other songwriting and production parties, and even DaBaby – who featured on the song’s remix that came out 6 months later. Lipa is yet to comment on either of the cases. In a conversation with Rolling Stone, Musicologist Joe Bennett weighed in on the situation. While the melodies may be similar, copyright infringement is about confluence – and according to Bennett “In my opinion, for what it’s worth, I think this is a coincidence.”
