Four LA-based songwriters have gone legal over the 2024 NewJeans hit ‘How Sweet’. They claim that track incorporates key elements of a song they wrote and produced to a brief provided by a company called BANA, a South Korean agency that produces music for the K-pop group.
In a lawsuit filed in California, the four writers - Audrey Armacost, Aidan Rodriguez, Adam Gokcebay and Michael Campanelli - say they provided a demo of their track to BANA in January 2024. At the time the agency said NewJeans would not be using their work but, it’s alleged, the verse one topline of their song was then incorporated into ‘How Sweet’ without permission being sought or granted.
Armacost, Rodriguez, Gokcebay and Campanelli “were never presented with a licence or agreement” permitting BANA or NewJeans to use their “topline and/or original elements therefrom”, their lawsuit states. Nor did they “ever authorise or consent” to their topline being incorporated into ‘How Sweet’. Which means NewJeans and all their business partners are liable for copyright infringement.
The legal filing provides insight into the creative process commonly employed in the K-pop business. The four writers received a brief and an instrumental track from BANA via LA music publisher Pulse Music Group, who Armacost works with. Pulse asked Armacost to write a topline - so basically a vocal melody and lyrics - for a new song to be performed over the instrumental.
“Pulse and New Jeans did not provide or require any particular creative contribution to or of Armacost with respect to the topline”, the lawsuit states. He then teamed up with Rodriguez, Gokcebay and Campanelli to create a demo track built on the provided instrumental, which they called ‘One Of A Kind’.
Once that was done, they sent their demo to BANA via Pulse. The Korean agency then confirmed “receipt and consideration of ‘One Of A Kind’”, but stated that - while they “listened to and liked” the four writers’ track - it “would not be selected or included as the final topline for the to-be-released song using the preexisting instrumental track”.
The lawsuit dissects the verse one topline of both ‘One Of A Kind’ and ‘How Sweet’ musically speaking in some detail in a bid to show the similarities. It also speculates about the process employed by BANA and the credited songwriters on ‘How Sweet’ when they were creating the NewJeans song.
“Upon information and belief”, the lawsuit states, the creation of ‘How Sweet’ involved listening to various demos submitted in response to BANA’s brief, including ‘One Of A Kind’, and then “taking particular sections or portions from those tracks, including ‘One Of A Kind’s verse one topline, and assembling them into a final work”.
In a bid to back up that theory, the lawsuit also quotes one of the credited co-writers of ‘How Sweet’, New Zealand-based Stella Bennett, aka Benee, who has said of the NewJeans song, it’s “a mix of three people’s songs merged into one”.
Needless to say, Team NewJeans dispute that theory about the creation of ‘How Sweet’ and therefore the accompanying copyright claim. The girl group’s label, HYBE’s Ador, has told The Korea Herald that it has been assured by BANA that “there was no plagiarism involved” in the creation of the track.
As a result Ador and NewJeans will now “actively respond to the lawsuit in line with BANA’s position”. Whether BANA’s assurances about the creation of ‘How Sweet’ are credible remains to be seen. Though, given how much legal fighting there has been between Ador and NewJeans in recent years, it’ll be nice for them to be on the same side in a legal battle for once.
There’s an awful lot of defendants named in this lawsuit, because a lot of people and companies were involved in the creation and release of the NewJeans track. The group’s members are listed, alongside BANA, Ador and HYBE, plus Universal Music, their label partner in the US, a plethora of music publishers, and even Coca Cola, which had a partnership with the K-pop outfit in relation to the track.