The Bill Withers Estate Thinks Olivia Dean Plagiarised "Just the Two of Us"

Olivia Dean has been accused of copying the melody of Bill Withers’ legendary song “Just the Two of Us” in a new lawsuit. The Withers estate, run by Mattie Music Group, is suing Dean’s record label Capitol Records, parent company Universal Music Group and her publishing companies, but not Dean herself.

The suit claims that Dean’s song “I’ve Seen It” and “Just the Two of Us” “share musical features” that are “so striking” they cannot have arisen by coincidence alone. They are claiming this was an act of deliberate plagiarism. To prove that, they will have to Dean and her co-writers had previously heard Withers’ original composition. In the lawsuit, they allege that Withers’ sog is so ubiquitous that Dean had “reasonable opportunity” to have encountered it before writing “I’ve Seen It.”

To me, there’s a vague glimmer of Withers’ song in “I’ve Seen It” but only a hint. If the Withers estate wanted to go after every artist who had vaguely “Just the Two of Us” vibes in their sogs, they’d never be out of the courtroom. Frankly, I find this case to be pretty suspicious. After the Marvin Gaye estate won their plagiarism lawsuit against “Blurred Lines”, the doors opened for a ton of shakedowns from the relatives of dead musicians who wanted a payday. Withers died in 2020 and the Mattie Music Group has done quite well for itself in licensing his work and image for samples, movie and TV use, and even a “Lovely Day” children’s book. They claim to have hired a musicologist to provide irrefutable proof that Olivia Dean’s song contained “repeated copying” of Withers, whose song has WAY more Spotify streams than “I’ve Seen It” but isn’t a recent Grammy winner or potential new revenue source.

The “Blurred Lines” screwed up modern music. It opened a Pandora’s box wherein judges and lawyers treat art as a set of data points that can be easily labelled as “copied” or “stolen”, which is simply not how music works. And as private equity and venture capitalists buy up estates and back-catalogues, they’re only further motivated to go after anyone they feel threatens their bottom line. What, you think the Gaye estate was just so worried about his legacy?

Not to hand it to Ed Sheeran of all people in these trying times, but he was right when that nonsense plagiarism lawsuit regarding “Thinking Out Loud” versus “Let’s Get It On” was found in his favour. As he said, “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.”

When Elvis Costello was asked about Olivia Rodrigo’s song “Brutal” having similarities to “Pump It Up” and whether or not he’d sue her for credit, he defended her, saying, “It’s how rock and roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand-new toy. That’s what I did.” The cadence of “I’ve Seen It” may have a brief moment of similarity to “Just the Two of Us” but is that direct and intentional plagiarism across the board for the entire song? Alas, that will be for a court to decide.