Lizzo has been sued for copyright infringement over a snippet of a song that includes lyrics about Sydney Sweeney’s controversial American Eagle ad.
All of that’s a bit of a mouthful, but it all kicked off when a Georgia-based company filed a lawsuit accusing Lizzo of not clearing the use of a sample for her unreleased song titled “I’m Goin’ In Till October”.
The singer performed a portion of that track on her Instagram and TikTok in August, which apparently pricked the ears of the owners of the 1970s track, “Win or Lose (We Tried)”.
Those owners, represented in the lawsuit by a company named The GRC Trust, accused Lizzo of unlawfully sampling the track, originally recorded by soul singer Sam Dees, in her social media snippet without permission.
So how has Sweeney been caught up in the fray? And how on Earth are we still talking about her notorious jeans/genes and her vocal fry, so irksome it lives in my head rent-free?
Well, in “I’m Goin’ In Till October”, Lizzo pokes fun at the American Eagle ad that had us all in a chokehold back in July, singing, “I got good jeans like I’m Sydney”.
If you recall, Sweeney was the subject of mass backlash when the ad made mention of her genetics and swiftly stirred accusations of promoting eugenics.
It was a big enough controversy to warrant an AS (After Sydney) timestamp, and now it’s continued with GRC’s claims that Lizzo and her label, Atlantic, “obtained profits they would not have realised but for their infringement of GRC’s rights”.
The lawsuit adds that the Trust attempted to reach an informal resolution over the sample used in Lizzo’s snippet “but reached an impasse”, therefore requiring a lawsuit.
They are seeking any profits as well as damages and attorneys fees. Sweeney, meanwhile, is just seeking a pair of trackpants because jeans are too troublesome at this point.
For her part, Lizzo’s lawyers claimed no profits were made from the track, arguing it was simply shared to social media and never received an official release.
“We are surprised that The GRC Trust filed this lawsuit,” Lizzo’s representative told the BBC. “To be clear, the song has never been commercially released or monetised.”
Lizzo’s post containing the track — which saw her dancing while washing a Porsche and yes, while wearing denim — has since been scrubbed from her social media pages.
It is the latest footnote in a saga that will someday be taught in schools, with Sweeney’s original ad drawing commentary from the literal White House and Donald Trump, as well as Halsey, Doja Cat and probably every member of your personal group chat.
Sweeney, meanwhile, has never properly addressed the backlash, but is probably as sick of hearing about denim as a former Just Jeans employee.
Lead images: Instagram
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