Miley Cyrus is facing copyright infringement allegations over her 2023 single “Flowers”, which won the artist her first set of Grammy awards earlier this year. Allegedly, her single is a twist of Bruno Mars’ song “When I Was Your Man” released in 2013, which is reported to be the song that her previous husband Liam Hemsworth once dedicated to her. Her fans have theorised that she created “Flowers” after the pair separated and deliberately released it on Hemsworth’s birthday in direct reference to their relationship.
A music investment platform called Tempo Music Investments, which own a portion of the rights in the 2013 song, filed the infringement claim in Los Angeles federal court without Bruno Mars as a named Claimant. It named Cyrus’ co-writers in the suit as well as distributors of the song such as Sony Music Publishing and Apple. Tempo Music claim that Cyrus has created a derivative work and has exploited the song without authorisation. It is alleged that Cyrus and her co-writers have duplicated numerous elements of the “When I Was Your Man” song, namely the melody, harmony and lyrics, which it suggests produce substantial similarities between the songs and therefore that “Flowers” would not exist without Mars’ song.
Tempo Music is seeking a sum of unspecified damages as well as an order that will prohibit Cyrus from reproducing, distributing and publicly performing the song. It has been reported that the claim seeks damages to be determined at trial or the maximum amount of $150,000 per infringement. Last year, “Flowers” spent 8 weeks at number 1 in the US charts and 10 weeks in the UK presumably because of all of the speculation around it, but if Tempo Music succeeds in its claim, the damages may turn out to be a very large amount.
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