Tempo Music Files Lawsuit In US Court Against Miley Cyrus For Copying Bruno Mars’ Song

Tempo Music Files Lawsuit In US Court Against Miley Cyrus For Copying Bruno Mars’ Song

Demands unspecified number of monetary damages and an order blocking the alleged infringement

A copyright lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court for the Central District of California by music-rights owner Tempo Music Investments against pop star Miley Cyrus for copying fellow megastar Bruno Mars' hit song When I Was Your Man in her No.1 single Flowers.

The complaint stated that Flowers duplicated "numerous melodic, harmonic and lyrical elements" of Mars' song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.

Mars, whose label is Warner Music Group's Atlantic Records, is not a party in the lawsuit.

In its complaint, Tempo stated it bought a share of When I Was Your Man from the song's co-writer Philip Lawrence in 2020.

The lawsuit accused streaming-service owners including Apple and Amazon and retailers including Target and Walmart of infringing Tempo's copyright by distributing Cyrus' song.

Cyrus released Flowers on her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation. Flowers has over 1 billion streams on Spotify and won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 2024.

Tempo's lawsuit stated, "Flowers has striking similarities to When I Was Your Man, including melodies, bass lines, chord progressions and lyrical elements. It cited a Billboard article from 2023 that read, “Any listener can detect that [Mars' song] boasts a chorus that is the inverse of what Cyrus sings on Flowers."