Pop star Miley Cyrus copied fellow megastar Bruno Mars’ hit When I Was Your Man in her number-one single Flowers, according to a copyright lawsuit filed in California federal court.
The complaint, filed on Monday, by music-rights owner Tempo Music Investments, said that Flowers duplicates “numerous melodic, harmonic and lyrical elements” of Mars’ song, which topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.
Spokespeople for Cyrus’ label Sony Music and attorneys and spokespeople for Tempo did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit on Tuesday.
Mars is not a party in the lawsuit, and spokespeople for his label, Warner Music Group’s Atlantic Records, declined to comment. Tempo said in the complaint that it bought its share of When I Was Your Man from the song’s co-writer Philip Lawrence in 2020.
The lawsuit also accused streaming-service owners including Apple and Amazon and retailers including Target and Walmart of infringing Tempo’s copyright by distributing Cyrus’ song. Spokespeople for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Cyrus released Flowers on her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation. Flowers has more than 1 billion streams on Spotify and won the Grammy award for Song of the Year in 2024.
Tempo’s lawsuit said that Flowers has “striking similarities” to When I Was Your Man, including melodies, bass lines, chord progressions and lyrical elements. It also cited a Billboard article from 2023, which said that “any listener can detect that [Mars’ song] boasts a chorus that is the inverse of what Cyrus sings on Flowers.”
Tempo asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an order blocking the alleged infringement.