Last week the world was greeted with the news that Scarlett Johansson had formed a band in Los Angeles, with Este Haim, Holly Miranda, Kendra Morris and Julia Haltigan, and had put out a song called Candy. They were called the Singles, and – Johansson told Rolling Stone – “The idea was to write super-pop dance music written and performed by girls.” They were signed to Dave Sitek’s Federal Prism label and everything was rosy.
A week on, and things aren’t looking so good. Because there’s already a band called the Singles, who are also based in LA, but have been around for 16 years rather than seven days. And they aren’t happy.
“I woke up one morning and learned from the news that our band name was literally just taken by someone else as their own,” Vincent Frederick, frontman of the original Singles, said. “It’s hard to believe that any musician would do something like that to another band. The Singles has been my life for the past 16 years. We have worked so incredibly hard to make it a success.”
And so the Singles (the old ones) have issued a cease-and-desist to the Singles (to the new ones), alleging trademark infringement. A lawyer representing Frederick’s band told the Hollywood Reporter that his clients had “issued a cease-and-desist demand to representatives of Scarlett Johansson, Este Haim, Julia Haltigan, Holly Miranda, Kendra Morris and Dave Sitek, demanding that they discontinue using the Singles as a band name and mark, given its continuous use by my clients the Singles for more than 15 years. Since 1999, the Singles have produced an extensive repertoire of albums, LPs, EPs, singles, and have performed their music countless times, nationally and internationally, including European tours in 2004, 2005, 2008, and a Japanese tour in 2004, all using their band name the Singles.”
Federal Prism’s Jeff Bowers told the Hollywood Reporter he would like to sell all of the vinyl and merchandise bearing the Singles name and donate the proceeds to the Los Angeles children’s hospital.
