Miley Cyrus has been hit with a lawsuit that claims her chart-topper 'Flowers' infringed on the copyright of Bruno Mars' hit 'When I Was Your Man', setting the stage for a legal battle over two tracks that many fans already thought were connected. .
Filed Monday in Los Angeles federal court, the suit alleges that Cyrus' track — which spent eight weeks atop the Hot 100 after its release in January 2023 — “duplicates many melodic, harmonic and lyrical elements” of the previous piece.
The complaint was not filed by Mars himself but by an entity called Tempo Music Investments that bought a share of the copyright to his song from one of its co-writers. In it, lawyers for this group claim that the two songs have “striking similarities”.
“Any fan of Bruno Mars' 'When I Was Your Man' knows that Miley Cyrus' 'Flowers' didn't achieve all this success on its own,” Tempo Music's lawyers write. “It's undeniable based on the mix and the number of similarities between the two recordings that 'Flowers' wouldn't have existed without 'When I Was Your Man'.”
A representative for Cyrus did not immediately return a request for comment on the allegations.
Tempo is not the first to note connections between the two songs. When “Flowers” was first released, many fans saw it as a “response song” to Mars' previous track — with Cyrus directly responding to the song's regrets. Where Ares laments that “I should have bought you flowers… take you to every party, because all you wanted to do was dance,” Cyrus laments on “Flowers,” that “I can buy myself flowers… I can to take myself to dance.”
The reason for the reports? According to internet speculation, Mars' song was a favorite of Cyrus' ex-husband Liam Hemsworth and her hints were a reference to their split.
Then said legal experts Bulletin board that Cyrus likely wasn't infringing copyright simply by using similar lyrics to respond to the previous song — a time-honored music industry tradition used by songs from Lynyrd Skynyrd's “Sweet Home Alabama” to countless rap diss records.
“This is great fodder for fan theories, but lawyers should have nothing to do with it,” Joseph Fishman, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, said at the time. “Using a song in response to a previous song is not, in and of itself, infringement.”
But in Monday's complaint, Tempo's lawyers argue that the similarities in Cyrus' song extend far beyond the clap-back lyrics, including “melodic and harmonic material,” a “pitch ending pattern” and “bass- line structure”.
“Immediately after the release of 'Flowers,' audiences recognized the striking similarities between the song and 'When I Was Your Man,'” Tempo's lawyers write. “The combination of elements – both musically and lyrically – confirms that 'Flowers' copies extensively from 'When I Was Your Man'”.
After the lawsuit was filed, some copyright experts remain skeptical. On social media, Fishman said the merits of Tempo's case were “weak” and that the musical similarities were rooted in common song elements also present in other tracks such as Gloria Gaynor's “I Will Survive” or “It's a Beautiful Life” by Ace of Base. ” He also wondered why Ares himself was not involved.
Aaron Moss, a veteran copyright litigator at the law firm Greenberg Glusker, cited several other songs that “respond to other songs,” such as Joy Division's “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and Captain's “Love Will Keep Us Together” & Tennille: “It's not copyright infringement,” Moss said.
A lawyer for Tempo did not immediately return a request for comment.
