A British music publishing company is suing The Weeknd, claiming that he ripped off music from a movie music track to make his song “The Hills.”
According to the lawsuit, Cutting Edge Music (Holding) Limited, is claiming that the singer used copyrighted music written by composter Tom Raybould for the 2013 film The Machine. The lawsuit, obtained by E! News, says The Weeknd “copyrighted musical composition of an original song, titled ‘Revolution’ on the soundtrack album and ‘Revolution Sequence’ on the cue sheet, from the score for the motion picture entitled The Machine.”
“With full knowledge of CEMH’s copyright in the Track, and without CEMH’s permission, Defendants blatantly copied a unique and significant portion of the Track and included it in a high profile and widely distributed single and album, thereby infringing on the copyrights exclusively licensed by CEMH,” the lawsuit states.
“Specifically, both the Infringing Song and the Track featuring synthesizer bass-lines performed with almost identical idiosyncratic sounds at the same register and using the same pitch sequence, melodic phase structure and rhythmic durations,” it continues.
What’s more, the lawsuit alleges that The Weeknd sent CEM a message on Twitter that read, “I sampled your music might make it 2 the weeknd next album. Huge fan of what u did 4 the machine movie!”
Then, only a few months later, “The Hills” was released.
You can listen to “The Hills” at the top of this page and listen to the portion of The Machine soundtrack below at the 26:43 mark. Let us know what you think in the comments below.
