Miley Cyrus has found herself facing legal trouble over her hit song Flowers.
The Grammy winner is being sued in a lawsuit alleging that she and her team of songwriters copied Bruno Mars’ 2013 track When I Was Your Man, according to documents obtained by E! News. The lawsuit, filed on 16th September by Tempo Music Investments, names Cyrus, her co-writers Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack, as well as several entertainment companies involved in distributing Flowers.
E! News reached out to representatives for Mars, Cyrus, Hein, and Pollack for comment but has not received a response.
The lawsuit claims that Flowers borrows “numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements” from When I Was Your Man, including “the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, certain bars of the chorus, theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions.”
The filing states: “Any fan of Bruno Mars’ ‘When I Was Your Man’ knows that Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’ did not achieve all of that success on its own… It is undeniable, based on the combination and number of similarities, that ‘Flowers’ would not exist without ‘When I Was Your Man.'”
Additionally, the lawsuit alleges that the lyrics in the chorus of Flowers have a “meaningful connection” to Mars’ lyrics, emphasising that the musical similarities are not coincidental.
Tempo Music Investments is requesting that Cyrus and the defendants be prohibited from reproducing, distributing, or publicly performing Flowers, while also seeking damages to be determined at trial.
This lawsuit comes just months after Cyrus earned her first two Grammy nominations for Flowers in the categories of Record of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Speaking about the song’s creation in an interview with British Vogue last June, Cyrus revealed: “I wrote it in a really different way… The chorus was originally: ‘I can buy myself flowers, write my name in the sand, but I can’t love me better than you can.’ It used to be more like the 1950s. The saddest song. Like: ‘Sure, I can be my own lover, but you’re so much better.'”
She later reworked the track, rejecting the sad ending, and described it as “a little fake it till you make it,” adding: “Which I’m a big fan of.”
