Miley Cyrus sued over Grammy-winning song Flowers for allegedly copying Bruno Mars hit

Miley Cyrus is being sued for copyright infringement over her chart-topping 2023 hit, Flowers.

The 31-year-old singer was hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit for allegedly copying Bruno Mars’ previous hit, When I Was Your Man, which was released in 2013 and also topped the pop charts.

However, it is not Mars who is suing Cyrus, but Tempo Music Investments. TMZ reported on Monday.

DailyMail.com has contacted representatives for Cyrus and Mars for comment.

In the lawsuit, Tempo Music accused Cyrus of “intentionally copying” When I Was Your Man in Flowers due to significant similarities between the two songs.

The investment company claims that Flowers features a similar melody and harmonies to the previous song, both in the verses and in the chorus.

He claims that the chord progressions used in Cyrus’s melody (which she is credited with writing with Aldae (real name: Gregory Hein) and Michael Pollack) are similar to the progressions in Mars’s song, and also claims that some of the song’s lyrics are similar to those in When I Was Your Man, which was written by Mars with Philip Lawrence, Ari Levin, and Andrew Wyatt.

Tempo claims in its lawsuit that “it is undeniable, based on the combination and number of similarities between the two recordings, that Flowers would not exist without When I Was Your Man.”

Both songs were hits for their respective artists and each reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.

When I Was Your Man was nominated for Best Pop Solo Performance at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards in 2014, but Flowers was even more successful.

The song won Record of the Year, which honors songwriters, along with the award Mars was nominated for, Best Pop Solo Performance.

Flowers was also nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys, although she did not win.

Tempo Music accuses Cyrus, her producers Kid Harpoon and Tyler Harper and her record label of having access to Mars’ song, even though almost all of them have access to the song, which was a hit when it was released a decade earlier and has remained easily accessible on physical media and streaming ever since.

The investment firm is seeking damages from Cyrus, though it is unclear whether it has specified the amount sought.

In a more severe move, she is requesting that she and her label be banned from distributing Flowers, which could entail removing it from future digital and physical versions of her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation, and the label is also requesting that Cyrus be prohibited from performing the popular song again.

It appears that Tempo Music, not Mars, filed the lawsuit after reportedly taking control of part of the song’s copyright.

In May 2021, it was reported that the Uptown Funk hitmaker had sold a portion of his song catalog to Warner Music Group six months earlier.

Few details about the scope of the stopover were revealed at the time, but Mars (real name: Peter Hernandez) was reported to have maintained majority ownership of its catalog.

In late 2019, Warner Music Group and Providence Equity Partners announced plans to invest $650 million in a new platform, Tempo Music Investments, according to Variety.

Tempo was designed to invest in artists’ catalogues, both their master recordings and their publishing rights.

In recent years, it has become increasingly common for artists to sell all or part of their catalogues to investment firms such as Tempo or its main competitor, Hipgnosis Songs Fund.

The move provides huge payouts to artists, many of whom (including Neil Young, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan) are at the end of their careers, while companies can then profit from royalties on the songs.

It’s less common for younger artists like Mars to sell their catalogs, although he only sold part of his.