Pop-punks Yellowcard claim rapper Juice Wrld ripped off one of their songs on his breakthrough hit, Lucid Dreams.
Most people probably remember Yellowcard as the pop-punk band behind the hit single Ocean Avenue (they also had a violinist). However, now Yellowcard have made headlines again for a different track, titled Holly Wood Died from their 2006 release Lights And Sounds. The band have hit rapper Juice Wrld with a $15 million lawsuit, claiming that he ripped off Holly Wood Died on his track Lucid Dreams.
According to Billboard, Yellowcard claim that Juice Wrld and his collaborators copied “melodic elements” from their song and used them on Lucid Dreams, which helped launch the rapper's career. Also included in the lawsuit are the song's co-writer Taz Taylor (a.k.a. Danny Lee Snodgress Jr.), his publishers Taz Taylor Beats, Artist 101 Publishing Group along with publishing administrator Kobalt Music Services; producer Nicholas Mira, his publishers Nick Mira Publishing, Electric Feel Music, and publishing administrator Songs of Universal; the song's publisher BMG Rights Management; record label Grade A Productions; and finally, Grade A’s parent company, Interscope Records.
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According to the complaint, "The Infringing Work and Infringing Sound Recording directly misappropriates quantitatively and qualitatively important portions of Plaintiffs’ Original Work in a manner that is easily recognizable to the ordinary observer. The Infringing Work and Infringing Sound Recording are not only substantially similar to the Original Work, but in some places virtually identical...The high degree of objective similarity between the Original Work and the Infringing Work extends well beyond the possibility of coincidence and could only reasonably be the result of an act of copying."
For the record, here's Lucid Dreams:
And here's Holly Wood Died:
The similarity mainly seems to be in the verse of Holly Wood Died and the chorus of Lucid Dreams, though the lawsuit seems to claim there are more in-depth appropriations at play here.
According to Yellowcard's attorney Richard Busch, "This was not a lawsuit the guys wanted to file. They put all of the parties on notice a long while ago and gave them every opportunity to try to resolve it. That notice was pretty much ignored leaving them with no real choice. As alleged in the Complaint, this is not just a generic Emo Rap song, but is a blatant copy of significant original compositional elements of Holly Wood Died in several respects. Beyond that, everything we have to say is in the Complaint.”
Lucid Dreams peaked at #2 on Billboard's Top 200, and apparently has 1.6 billion on-demand streams in the U.S.
How this will pan out for Yellowcard remains to be seen.
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