Earlier this week, Disclosure and their collaborators were accused by songwriter Katie Farrah Sopher of using stolen lyrics in a number of their tracks. The electronic duo, brothers Guy and Howard Lawrence, have responded, asserting that the allegations are “completely false”.
Sopher alleged that in 2009, her ex-boyfriend Sean Sawyers stole her songbook and sold its lyrics to music-industry contacts. She claims that Disclosure’s White Noise, Latch and You & Me feature words taken from her personal songbook, and is asking for £200,000 in damages for the tracks, according to legal documents obtained by the Mail on Sunday.
These allegations not only include her ex-boyfriend, but Sopher is suing Disclosure, as well as Sam Smith and Eliza Doolittle, who feature on the tracks lifted from the group’s No 1 album, Settle. She is also seeking damages from AlunaGeorge, both for their contribution to Disclosure single White Noise and the R&B pop duo’s top 20 track Attracting Flies, which she also claims uses her lyrics.
In a message posted on Facebook, Disclosure say the claims are completely false. They say “[We] didn’t get into this industry to steal other people’s ideas, and we haven’t – we are musicians, artists and producers.”
The rest of the post adds:
Firstly we want to make it very clear that every Disclosure song we have put our names to has been written by us. We sometimes write lyrics and melodies alongside whoever the featured singer may be (i.e. Sam, Eliza etc) and the great Mr. Jimmy Napes, but that is it. When we do, we always make sure everyone gets proper credit. We take great pride in our self-sufficiency, our work and the way we work, and it’s incredibly frustrating when someone tries to take that away from us, by claiming we stole even one word or one note of our music from anyone.
The Mail on Sunday have reported that Sawyer “strongly rejected” the allegations, saying that there was “zero truth” in the claims, and that he had never seen the songbook in question.
