Sam Smith & Normani Sued For Copyright Infringement

Sam Smith & Normani certainly know how to captivate audiences with their musical talents. The pair have given fans a number of hit songs to groove to over the years. Recently, they were taken to court over copyright infringement charges on one of their collaborative efforts.

NME reports that a new lawsuit was filed against Sam Smith and Normani. The lawsuit alleges that they copied elements of a song on their hit collaboration, ‘Dancing With A Stranger.’

In a complaint filed in a Los Angeles federal court on March 4, songwriters Jordan Vincent, Christopher Miranda and Rosco Banlaoi allege that the pair’s song has the “same” title, chorus and composition as a song they wrote. The song in question was published on Vincent’s YouTube and Spotify channels back in 2017.

The complaint was first obtained by Rolling Stone. The court document read, “The hook/chorus in both songs, the most significant part and artistic aspect of these works, contains the lyrics ‘dancing with a stranger’ being sung over a nearly identical melody and musical composition.” The lawsuit goes on to show a side-by-side comparison of the two songs and further alleges that the track’s accompanying videos are also similar.

The lawsuit claims that “both videos consist of a girl performing interpretive dance alone in a minimalist studio, interspersed with shots of the male vocalist.” The lawsuit further alleges,

“A girl dancing alone is not an obvious visual theme for a music video titled ‘Dancing With a Stranger,’ tending to dispel any notion that this similarity is a coincidence…When the extraordinary musical similarity between the songs is also factored in, it becomes even more apparent that it is impossible that the infringing composition and
sound recording were independently created.”

Meanwhile, “Dancing With A Stranger” has hit platinum status in over ten countries and has been streamed over three-billion times. You can watch Jordon’s as well as Smith’s version of the song below.

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