Mickael Zieben and Patrice Adekalom, two French musicians, claimed that their song “How Is it Gonna Be” was copied by Calvin Harris in his 2017 song “Slide.” Zieben and Adekalom alleged Harris ripped off their work and are now requesting that they are awarded songwriting credits, recall of record sales, and $1M in damages from the “flagrantly similar” Calvin Harris track, failed to produce a resolution. Defendants include: Calvin Harris, Frank Ocean, Migos, Sony Music Publishing France, UMPG’s Paris division, SMP’s EMI Music Publishing France, Migos’ Quality Control label, and Reservoir represent some of the suit’s other defendants.
“Slide” is certified Platinum in France – Zieben and Adekalom “tried to amicably resolve the dispute,” according to a summons.
“Feeling left behind without any recognition is very detrimental,” Zieben and Adekalom told us of the alleged infringement, which they indicated “completely ruined” their promotion plans. “What shocked us as well was the ‘How I made Slide’ video showing Calvin Harris as if he was pretending to play the introduction of ‘Slide’ on an upright piano.”
“He hadn’t done anything like this before, as if he needed to escape his guilt with a self-justifying video. Since we noticed that, we decided that this fraud had to come to an end,” continued the plaintiff composers.
The first of these musicologists, London’s Chandler & Siddell, found “striking similarities between the two” songs in a nine-page-long report dated March of 2019. And one Laurent Souques, “an expert recognized by the Court of Appeal of Paris,” identified all manner of perceived similarities (“the same process of dubbing a piano,” for instance) in a 30-page (French-language) analysis of his own dated April of 2019.
“We also hope that live recording composers and musicians like us will be treated with more recognition by the music industry. We also have music rights that are worth standing up for,” said Zieben and Adekalom. “Most people don’t see what a composer goes through to make the cut behind the scenes.”
“Harris knows how it feels to be ripped off because he experienced this problem before when he wasn’t even internationally renowned. Today he has to admit that he’s the one who stole a song from independent composers.”
– Excerpt from an article for Digital Music New by Dylan Smith. Read the full article here.
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