Lizzo has been sued for sampling the 1970s Sam Dees song ‘Win Or Lose (We Tried)’ on a new track. However, the track in question has never been released and has only ever appeared in a social media post back in August.
It was a post that went viral as a result of it commenting on the controversy that surrounded the Sydney Sweeney American Eagle Jeans ad campaign. But the track isn’t available anywhere else and no one’s even quite sure what to call it, with two titles to choose from: ‘I’m Goin In Till October’ or ‘Good Jeans’.
The GRC Trust, which controls rights in ‘Win Or Lose (We Tried)’, claims that Lizzo’s social media post featured a track that “incorporated, interpolated and sampled instrumental and vocal elements” of the 1970s song without permission, adding that representatives for Lizzo have admitted as much.
Even so, Team Lizzo seem somewhat confused by the lawsuit, mainly because of the limited reach of the offending Lizzo track. Responding to the litigation, a spokesperson stresses that that track “has never been commercially released or monetised” and that, as of now, “no decision has been made regarding any future commercial release of the song”.
The fact the Lizzo track hasn’t been commercially released doesn’t necessarily mean there is no liability for copyright infringement in relation to its inclusion in the social media post. And under US law the copyright owner could sue for statutory damages of $150,000 without having to show what they actually lost as a result of the infringement.
In its lawsuit, GRC says it has “suffered damages in an amount to be established at trial” as a result of the uncleared sample, “including but not limited” to the loss of “a reasonable licence fee for defendants’ use of the composition”.
It also claims that Lizzo and her business partners, including Warner Music’s Atlantic Records, have “obtained profits they would not have realised but for their infringement of GRC’s rights in the composition”.
GRC’s lawsuit is pretty basic, but presumably if the litigation was to proceed it would be keen to stress that the video in which the uncleared sample appeared went viral, mainly because of the lyric referencing the slightly controversial American Eagle Jeans ad campaign that featured the actress Sydney Sweeney.
That ad played on the homophones ‘jeans’ and ‘genes’, and the double meaning of the expression “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” when spoken out loud, prompting allegations that the jeans company’s marketing campaign alluded to white supremacy or eugenics.
In her social media clip, Lizzo was seen washing a car while wearing a denim top and cut off shorts, and the accompanying track contained the lyric “I got good jeans like I’m Sydney”. Which was variously seen as supporting or criticising Sweeney and her jeans ad campaign.
None of which is relevant to the copyright dispute, except that the fact the video went viral will probably be crucial if GRC, as the owner of the ‘Win Or Lose (We Tried)’ copyright, is to demonstrate it was damaged by a Lizzo track that has never actually been released.
It’s not the first time Lizzo has been at the centre of a copyright dispute that began with a social media post, though in that case the track - ‘Truth Hurts’ - was properly released, but it included a lyric originally lifted from a social media post that stated, “I just took a DNA test, turns out I'm 100% that bitch”.
That prompted a complaint from the artist behind the social media post, Mina Lioness, and also a lawsuit filed by other collaborators of Lizzo who claimed they had been involved in the creation of an earlier song that morphed into ‘Truth Hurts’ but were not properly credited on the final release.