Dua Lipa allegedly jacked a Florida-based reggae band song.
The Reggae band, Artikal Sound System, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on Tuesday claiming that Dua Lipa‘s song “Levitating” rips off their 2017 track “Live Your Life.”
The reggae band, based in Florida, filed the lawsuit in a Los Angeles federal court, and in the pleadings filed, they claim that they’ve been performing and touring together since 2010. Their song “Live Your Life” charted to No. 2 on the Billboard reggae chart in 2017.
According to Billboard, the lawsuit names Dua Lipa, Warner Records, co-songwriters, and the producer for “Levitating” as defendants and makes the bold claim that the defendants “listened to and copied ‘Live Your Life’ before and when they were writing ‘Levitating.'”
The claim also says that “‘Levitating’ is substantially similar to ‘Live Your Life,'” although it does not identify what elements make the songs similar.
“Given the degree of similarity, it is highly unlikely that ‘Levitating’ was created independently from ‘Live Your Life.'”
Dua Lipa has not publicly responded to the lawsuit.
The song became immensely popular during the DaBaby Rolling Loud scandal, in which Dua Lipa had removed DaBaby from a remixed version in protest of his rants about people in the LGBTQ community.
“Levitating” was originally released in her 2020 album’ Future Nostalgia’. The song has 475 million views on YouTube.
The original song with which the lawsuit is concerned peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. It, however, recorded better success on other charts, including peaking at No. 1 on the Adult Contemporary, Adult Top 40, and Mainstream Top 40 charts. It snagged the No. 1 song spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 Year-End chart.
In the meantime, fans have begun to react to the lawsuit, with many claiming that there are indeed similarities between the songs.
According to one Artikal Sound System fan, both songs have “identical beat and chorus (the most recognizable parts of the songs are identical.”
Another fan said, “They literally have the same lyrics too. Like how do you come up with the same beat, same melody AND the word ‘moonlight’ in the same spot.”
“Even the cadence is the same the line at the beginning is the exact melody she sings in her song and the beat is exactly the same,” another person said.
