Dua Lipa is nearly halfway through her Future Nostalgia tour, which finally kicked off this year after multiple delays due to the pandemic. Alas, she’s faced some other dilemmas. The singer was recently sued by Florida reggae band Atrikal Sound System after they accused her of stealing “Levitating” from their 2017 song “Live Your Life.” Now, Lipa has received a second lawsuit over the same song.
According to Billboard, songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer filed a complaint in Manhattan federal court, accusing Lipa of stealing “Levitating” from the 1979 song “Wiggle And Giggle All Night” and the 1980 song “Don Diablo.” Brown and Linzer claim that the opening melody on “Levitating” is a “duplicate” of the melody on their songs. “Defendants have levitated away plaintiffs’ intellectual property,” the lawyers for Brown and Linzer wrote in their complaint. “Plaintiffs bring suit so that defendants cannot wiggle out of their willful infringement.” They added, “In seeking nostalgic inspiration, defendants copied plaintiffs’ creation without attribution.”
The new lawsuit also names Lipa’s label Warner Records and DaBaby, who appeared on a remix of the song. “Levitating” was one of the singles from Dua Lipa’s stellar sophomore album Future Nostalgia and it peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
Dua Lipa is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.