Ariana Grande settles 7 Rings song-theft lawsuit
08. 03. 2021A song-theft lawsuit that accused Ariana Grande of ripping off an earlier song on her 2019 hit ‘7 Rings’ has been settled.
A song-theft lawsuit that accused Ariana Grande of ripping off an earlier song on her 2019 hit ‘7 Rings’ has been settled.
Grande and her many co-writers on the 2019 track were sued last year by Josh Stone. He said Grande’s hit lifted elements of his song ‘You Need It, I Got It’. The lawsuit stated that “a lay person listening to the ‘hook’ and chorus of both songs can hear the strikingly similar and, at times, identical beat, rhythm and lyrics of both songs”.
In his original legal filing Stone explained how, after recording his track in January 2017, he had various meetings with music industry types, including at Universal Music Publishing. Producer Tommy Brown was invited to attend that meeting, Stone claimed, and subsequently got in touch with him to express specific interest in ‘You Need It, I Got It’ and suggesting that they might collaborate in the future.
However, no such collaborations between Stone and Brown occurred. Brown did collaborate, however, with Grande on the making of ‘7 Rings’. “Defendant Brown simply took ‘I Got It’ to Ariana Grande and the other defendants and later repackaged ‘I Got It’ into ‘7 Rings'”, the lawsuit alleged.
The dispute had the makings of a classic song-theft court battle, but no such court battle will now occur. The New York court where the litigation was filed has confirmed that a settlement has been reached. Needless to say, no details about the settlement have been revealed.
The court itself stated: “It having been reported to this court that this case has been settled, it is ordered that the above-captioned action be, and hereby is, dismissed without costs and without prejudice to restoring the action to this court’s calendar if the application to restore the action is made within 30 days”.
