But The Plaintiff’s Musicological Argument Still Falls Flat.
Music copyright stuff happened yesterday, a little bit. As reported by Rolling Stone and Billboard this morning, the Miley Cyrus’s Flowers vs. Bruno Mars’ When I Was Your Man case can’t stop, won’t stop—following an interesting attempt at dismissal that stood no reasonable chance.
Flowers, of course, was released in 2023 as a single from Miley Cyrus’s Endless Summer Vacation. It spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 and took home the Grammy for Record of the Year. It was also, quite obviously, a response song nodding to When I Was Your Man, Bruno Mars’s massive hit from a decade earlier.
The plaintiff here is not Mars, but Tempo Music Investments, which acquired partial rights to When I Was Your Man from one of its writers. The defense had argued that because the other rightsholders weren’t involved, Tempo lacked standing to sue on its own. This argument was a head-scratcher. And now, it appears to have failed—at least on its face. The defendants, I’d add, are represented by one of the best in the business, Peter Anderson, which actually made me wonder whether this was somehow a knowingly doomed opening play… for reasons.
Judge Pregerson, though, as reported in Rolling Stone, framed the standing issue like this:
“If someone wants to buy what someone owns, buy the entire thing, and that includes the right to enforce that ownership against the rest of the world. If you don’t allow that, then you diminish the value of what you’re selling to the point where it may become worthless.”
I agree and find plausible what Tempo Music lead counsel Alex Weingarten told Billboard: that the motion to dismiss was “intellectually dishonest.” Sure, maybe. But then he continued:
“They’re seeking to make bogus technical arguments because they don’t have an actual substantive defense to the case.”
No, that’s not it. The defendants do not believe their case is weak. Not at all. As I laid out when the case was first filed, they have plenty of substantive defense. This won’t be the last motion to dismiss. If anything does ring out here for me, it’s that the attempt reflects, first, patience, and also that juries—far more unpredictable than experts—can introduce risk, even when the musicological facts are on your side. And that’s where my expertise comes in. As a forensic musicologist and the writer behind Musicologize, I break down cases like this to separate what’s legally strategic from what’s actually true about the music. As I’ve already pointed out, the supposed similarities between Flowers and When I Was Your Man don’t hold up under my forensic scrutiny.
This round was fated to go by quietly. And the plaintiffs can enjoy what looks like a win, but now that we’re past this procedural detour, I’d say it’s they who have to show there’s actual substance to this claim. Which is a problem—because there isn’t any.
