Is Miley Cyrus' hit Flowers a copy of Bruno Mars song?
LOS ANGELES – American pop star Miley Cyrus copied fellow megastar Bruno Mars’ hit, When I Was Your Man (2012), in her No. 1 single Flowers (2023), according to a copyright lawsuit filed in California federal court.
The complaint, filed on Sept 16 by music rights owner Tempo Music Investments, said Flowers duplicates “numerous melodic, harmonic and lyrical elements” of Mars’ song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.
Representatives for Cyrus’ label Sony Music and attorneys and representatives for Tempo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Sept 17.
Mars, 38, is not a party in the lawsuit, and representatives for his label, Warner Music Group’s Atlantic Records, declined to comment. Tempo said in the complaint that it bought its share of When I Was Your Man from the song’s co-writer Philip Lawrence in 2020.
The lawsuit also accused streaming service owners, including Apple and Amazon, and retailers, including Target and Walmart, of infringing Tempo’s copyright by distributing Cyrus’ song. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cyrus, 31, released Flowers on her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation. The song has more than one billion streams on Spotify and won the Grammy award for Song of the Year in 2024.
Tempo’s lawsuit said Flowers has “striking similarities” to When I Was Your Man, including melodies, bass lines, chord progressions and lyrical elements.
It also cited a Billboard article from 2023, which said that “any listener can detect that (Mars’ song) boasts a chorus that is the inverse of what Cyrus sings on Flowers”.
Tempo asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an order blocking the alleged infringement. – REUTERS
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