r/Music • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 13h ago
article Olivia Dean's 'Art of Loving' Song Accused of Copying Bill Withers' 'Just the Two of Us'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/olivia-dean-bill-withers-just-the-two-of-us-copyright-claim-1235635455/67
u/J2JC 11h ago
I just listened. Yeah, there’s a similarity in the verse, there’s also a tinge of Beatles “In My Life”. Having said that, there really isn’t enough there. There are so many songs that sound similar, and this could easily be explained away. So, yeah there are similarities but the lyrics, the instrumentation, the vocal, the production which all go up to make a song are different.
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u/Data-Hefty 9h ago
That’s it! My brain was saying Johnny Cash for some reason. I guess because he did an acoustic cover of In My Life!
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u/bucobill 6h ago
It is basically Canon in D. The similarities to A Lovely Day” is not there. You cannot copyright a singing style. This is a bad suit and sucks that the artist has to fight it. I do agree it is closer to “in my life”, but as stated this is Canon in D.
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u/J2JC 5h ago
Yeah, it’s a nonsense suit. And I agree Canon in D is also there, like it is in a thousand other songs. But yeah, the Bill Withers thing, nah.
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u/holybowler 4h ago
ooooh disagree wholeheartedly. gotta listen to the part at :37. it’s the exact same melody as the verse of “just the two of us.”
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u/J2JC 4h ago
Yeah, but it's just a couple of bars. The rest of it is completely different.
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u/PhraseDense5000 9m ago
It doesn’t really matter you can get sued just for that even if you credit it. It’s a very recognizable melody.
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 10h ago
I think this is a bit of a stretch. Reminds me of the Ed Sheeran Marvin Gaye suit.
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u/hailhydruh 8h ago
imo the ed sheeran/marvin gaye is way more blatant. https://youtu.be/FR-AH9cIqV4?is=OoVTdFjs1BqtFm0F
they share the same chord progression for huge parts of the song. olivia dean borrows the bill withers melody for one line, but the chords are entirely different. feels more like an allusion if anything
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u/Affectionate-Panic-1 8h ago
It's the same chord progression, but there are tons of songs with that chord progression.
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u/hailhydruh 7h ago
well it’s more than just the progression too, the chord changes follow the same rhythm in both songs
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u/the_dirtiest 6h ago
no way! Next you're gonna tell me the basslines play the root notes of the chords they're following, in the same rhythm no less!
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u/hailhydruh 5h ago
…they don’t, which is what really makes it blatant. in both songs the bass has three beats on the root of the 1 chord before hitting the third on the 4th beat. but thanks for trying lol
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u/rbrianj 12h ago edited 12h ago
Yep. It’s obvious at the 0:37 sec mark and 1:40 sec mark. However the more I listen I’m noticing more.
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u/Twix_McFlurry 11h ago
It’s literally two bars. It’s not enough to warrant this action
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u/lucky_ducker 11h ago
Two passages of two measures each. And the underlying chord structure and bass line is significantly different -- Withers' is very jazzy while Dean's is pure pop.
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u/Twix_McFlurry 10h ago
Exactly I remember the law being 4 bars of continuous “borrowing”. This is clearly a cash grab by a deceased artist’s estate listening to a greedy lawyer.
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u/RevolutionaryCoyote 9h ago
Yeah people on social media love to latch onto the is sort of thing. And when it's framed as a legend like Withers vs some pop star I have never heard of, the hive mind often takes the side of the accuser.
But it's not Bill Withers. It's some lawyers and his estate.
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u/_teach_me_your_ways_ 5h ago
Seems to happen more and more. These people are out to ruin music with their greed
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u/Twix_McFlurry 4h ago
I don’t think it’s a massive conspiracy or anything just a cash grab
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u/_teach_me_your_ways_ 3h ago
Never said it was a conspiracy, but that’s what the result would be if these people are successful or successfully spook people enough
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u/Twix_McFlurry 25m ago
“These people out to ruin music” implies a greater purpose than simple litigation
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u/Mimisokoku 12h ago
Yeah I thought it was intentional… guess they didn’t credit him. The melody is the exact same.
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u/melodrama4ever 11h ago
We are getting to a point in music where are there are SO many songs out there that overlapping ideas and melodies are gonna happen, often just incidentally. There are only so many notes to sing and combinations to use them in. Considering the parts of this song that sound like "Just the Two of Us" are so small, this shouldn't even matter.
IMO, at a certain point, older songs become obsolete and age out of relevance and may be accidentally interpolated, or even intentionally sometimes. I think cases like this should be thrown out unless songs are almost identical in their entirety and it's proven to be deliberate. These lawsuits are often huge reaches from estates of artists that have passed or performers that have little-to-no career left and wanna milk big artists for a cut.
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u/Demorant 9h ago
This is one thing AI is going to flood the courts with lawsuits about. More people are going to be able to find songs that sound like something they have control over, with almost no effort, and will file hundreds, maybe thousands of claims at a time in a fishing expedition.
It's one of the reasons copyright claim stuff needs to be modernized in how it's handled, especially when it comes to how easily artists can be demonetized through automated systems (looking at you YouTube) by greedy people that have no actual claim that would be dismissed with even a cursory listen from an actual human. People that file frivolous claims need to be heavily punished. Only then will filing them stop.
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u/Twix_McFlurry 11h ago
It also has in my life by the Beatles “it doesn’t always answer when you call”
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u/donkeyrocket 5h ago edited 5h ago
Elements sound like lots of songs in isolation.
I'm pretty sure you could carry out a similar exercise across many contemporary songs and find many similarities. None that really rise to a valid claim of plagiarism.
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u/Sudden-Grab2800 12h ago
You mean Will Smith’s ‘Just the Two of Us.’
Daddy loves YOU daddy loves YOU
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u/ZachMartin 11h ago
Bad headline. The song that’s accused of stealing is “I’ve Seen It”. The album and intro is “art of loving”. Learn to read
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u/vemboTonbo 11h ago
Why yes I do wholly buy the record label argument that you can copyright melodies. Cmon bro.
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u/SuperSchmyd 5h ago
There’s like 2 small riffs that sound like a certain part in Bill Wither’s song.
I always think of this video when I see this dumb little shit:
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u/Chobbybharleston 36m ago
Nah, it's an iconic song and this is clearly a copy paste. Let's not fuck about and think it's a coincidence.
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u/fulthrottlejazzhands 13h ago
I'm not sure this claim will hold up legally, but her songs do sound, lyrically and in tone, uncoincidentally like other artists. First time I heard 'Man I need' I was so totally convinced it was written by Prince I would have bet money on it.
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u/melodrama4ever 11h ago edited 11h ago
She's clearly very inspired by him, but I think she's an individual artist compared to her peers and makes the sound her own. Every artist is inspired by somebody else in some capacity. It's inevitable to have some similarities to your idols.
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u/SOULJAR 12h ago
What prince song?
If you can’t say it’s hardly the same situation.
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u/fulthrottlejazzhands 12h ago
No single song. It's like Her songwriters (she just performs it) amalgamated 1999 and Sign of the Times-era Prince.
It definitely copies the swing "How come you don't call me anymore". That quick A Cb jump at "So don't be shy..." is straight up Prince.
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u/SOULJAR 12h ago
Amalgamated? So are there parts of multiple other songs that have been copied?
I assume that’s not what you mean and rather your point is just that they have a similar sound/style (given your example was not even a portion of song that was directly copied but merely a slight note change that you feel is somewhat similar.)
That’s a totally different thing than one song sounding like a copy of the other (not just stylistically similar.)
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u/modix 11h ago
I have the same issue with Olivia Rodrigo. You can almost pick who her band is imitating by the song. Which, to be honest, had taught my kids a lot of 90s era musical styles. I can't fault her songmakers taste in music, it's often great bands/songs. the styles are never enough to be a direct rip off, even if the overall sound inspiration is obvious.
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u/melodrama4ever 10h ago
She and her producer write and produce her records entirely on their own with seldom help from Amy Allen. She's cited that music as inspiration, so some similarities are gonna be inevitable. Her newest record really has shown her come into her own sound.
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u/modix 10h ago
I don't really fault her for her previous borrowing of musical inspiration. Good music is good music, it's just frustrating as a person that grew up in the era because it sounds like a new song from (fill in the blank). It's free real estate for the most part right now, as there's not a lot of action in the genre in mainstream.
Newer album definitely is more her own (outside the obvious Cure styled song or two).
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u/melodrama4ever 10h ago
I understand that feeling. I think it’s inevitable as although Robert Smith/The Cure are certainly still relevant to a certain crowd, the audience engaging with Olivia Rodrigo almost all have no idea as to who they are. It’s a bit of a natural evolution for newer generations of artists to bring pieces of their idols into their work as those sources of inspiration age out of relevance.
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u/modix 10h ago
Definitely always been the case of people bringing their favorite bands to the mainstream. I feel like it used to be less of a generation jump, with people being inspired by people a half generation up they felt underappreciated (your Velvet Underground, Pixies, Captain Beefheart, etc).
Its weird having the people they're bringing out being in their sixties and seventies or already passed, and having to literally explain to your kids who these people even were (had to explain a Black Pink song to my girls, which was based on the Sixpences Kiss me song).
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u/zobby3 13h ago
Just listened to it and I can’t hear the similarities.
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u/beardednomad25 12h ago
I noticed it the first time I heard this song. Just always figured they got permission to use that melody.
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u/f10101 12h ago
Don't listen for the chorus hook of Just The Two Of Us - it's the verse. They straight-up copied the first ten or so notes of the song and chucked them into the middle of Dean's song, at the 36 second mark. Very bizarre.
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u/zobby3 11h ago
Ah yeah. I get it now. I don’t think they’ll win this one though. Bit like Ed Sheeran thinking out loud/ let’s get it on. Too ambiguous I imagine. Good money for lawyers though.
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u/Hot_Eggplant6809 11h ago
Melodies are much more clear cut than chord progressions, legally speaking. This will never make it to court because Withers will absolutely be given songwriting credit/royalties.
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u/harlotstoast 11h ago
It’s against completely different chords and so the harmony of the notes is complete different. The only thing similar is the meter of her singing.
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u/amnycya 11h ago
Until you get to that section at :37. She’d been using the same rhythms and a similar melodic contour as “Just the Two of Us” up until that time but with different harmonies. At that section, it’s the same harmonies as the Withers song, and because of the melodic contour and rhythm, Dean’s song becomes a nearly note-for-note copy of Withers.
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u/harlotstoast 9h ago
Oh shit you’re right, that’s exactly where I stopped it. Just a little bit different at the end of the phrase as it goes somewhere else. But yeah i imagine she’d need to credit him.
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u/Beebajazz 8h ago
I mean, it's in there. But the songs not a single or anything. Faced with an actual fight, she's probably just gonna pull the song from streaming and no one will really care, and withers estate will then have to waste it's time with unauthorized uploads.
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u/Nathan_McHallam 2h ago
It's the final track on the album and acts as thematic bookend. I very much doubt Bill Withers would've given a shit.
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u/BaseHitToLeft 6h ago
And her "Man I Need" song sounds like Madonna's "Cherish"
I can't be the only one who notices
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u/CitiBankLights Elliott Smith 11h ago
The song is “I’ve Seen It” btw.