Lawsuit claims Miley Cyrus copied Bruno Mars’ song for hit ‘Flowers’

Pop star Miley Cyrus copied 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 Monday by music rights owner Tempo Music Investments, said “Flowers” duplicates the “numerous melodic, harmonic and lyrical elements” of Mars’ song, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.

Spokespeople for Cyrus’ record 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 to 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 AAPL.O and Amazon and retailers including Target and Walmart of infringing Tempo’s copyright by distributing Cyrus’ song. Spokesmen for the companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Cyrus released “Flowers” on her 2023 album Endless Summer Vacation. “Flowers” has over 1 billion streams on Spotify and won the 2024 Grammy Award for Song of the Year.

Tempo’s lawsuit said that “Flowers” has “striking similarities” to “When I Was Your Man”, including melodies, basslines, chord progressions and lyrical elements. He also cited a 2023 Billboard article that said “any listener can detect that (Mars’ song) has a chorus that is the opposite of what Cyrus sings on ‘Flowers.’

Tempo asked the court for an unspecified amount of monetary damages and an injunction to block the alleged infringement.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Tomasz Janowski)