He added: “There’s a growing disconnect between how these cases are decided — by academically analyzing briefs, bar lines, and musical notation — versus how audiences actually experience music. The soul of a song doesn’t live in a court brief. It lives in the sound, the feel, and the performance — and that’s what juries should be allowed to hear and judge.”
Reps for Lipa and additional defendants Clarence Coffee Jr., Sarah Hudson, Stephen Kozmeniuk, Sony Music Publishing, Universal Music Corporation and Warner Records Inc. have not yet responded to PEOPLE’s requests for comment.
In March 2022, the “Physical” hitmaker was hit with a second copyright infringement lawsuit over “Levitating” by L. Russell and Linzer.
She was one of several defendants named in a complaint that alleged the hit was “substantially similar” to the 1979 Cory Daye song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night,” penned by L. Russell and Linzer.
L. Russell and Linzer claimed that the song’s “signature melody…is a duplicate” of the opening melody of “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and the 1980 Miguel Bosé song “Don Diablo,” to which they also own the copyright, per the complaint, which was obtained by PEOPLE.
“The notes move in the same direction with evenly matched intervals or ‘steps,’ and almost identical rhythms,” the complaint read, noting that the opening melody is repeated six times in “Levitating,” and three times in a remix featuring DaBaby.
Brown and Linzer noted that Lipa had spoken about finding inspiration in older disco-era songs in several interviews, and said they filed the suit so that she and the other defendants “cannot wiggle out of their willful infringement.”
“Lipa admitted that she deliberately emulated prior eras of music to create Future Nostalgia, the aptly named album on which ‘Levitating’ appears,” the complaint read. “In seeking nostalgic inspiration, Defendants copied Plaintiffs’ creation without attribution.”
The plaintiffs were requesting an unspecified amount of damages.
At the time, a rep for Lipa did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
Lipa also faced a copyright infringement suit from the Florida reggae band Artikal Sound System, claiming that “Levitating” ripped off their 2017 song “Live Your Life.” She won the dismissal of that suit in June 2023.
The “New Rules” hitmaker was also hit with a third lawsuit over “Levitating” in July 2023 from music producer Bosko Kante who claimed the pop star was never given permission to use his “talk box” recording in her remixes of “Levitating,” per Billboard.
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