Canadian singer The Weeknd is being sued by three songwriters who have accused him of copying one of their songs and want all the royalties from the track.
William ‘Billy’ Smith, Brian Clover and Scott McCulloch are taking legal action against the ‘Can’t Feel My Face’ hitmaker in a bid to receive the profits from his song ‘A Lonely Night’.
According to court documents obtained by The Blast, the trio believes The Weeknd blatantly copied their own song ‘I Need To Love’ to create his track, which featured on his award-winning album ‘Starboy’.
The men wrote ‘I Need To Love’ in 2004-2005 and pitched it to a number of artists around the world, before a division of Universal Music acquired the rights to all their songs in 2008.
However, in 2016, they were told the label were relinquishing all rights – and weeks later, they were unimpressed to hear ‘A Lonely Night’ for the first time.
The writers who have edited the two songs together to highlight the similarities – are seeking unspecified damages, along with $150,000 per infringement and forensic accounting to figure out how much they’re owed.
Last year, The Weeknd and Daft Punk were sued by Somali-American poet Yasminah, who accused them of “ripping off” her 1999 song ‘Hooyo’ for ‘Starboy’s title track.
The R&B artist is convinced that the musicians copied several of the beats, tempo, and hooks on the song and she claimed to have read several articles on blog sites and social media which remarked on the similarities in the two songs.
Yasminah’s producers reportedly previously took the pair to court over ‘Starboy’, but she never received a penny from the cases.