The case, filed against the breakout singer’s label and publisher, claims her song “I’ve Seen It” stole key elements from the famed 1980 song by Bill Withers.
A new lawsuit claims that a track on Olivia Dean’s hit album The Art Of Loving was copied from Bill Withers’ iconic “Just the Two of Us” — and says that the similarities are “obvious and inescapable.”
The copyright case, filed Thursday (Oct. 1) by a publisher that owns Withers’ catalog, alleges that key elements of Dean’s “I’ve Seen It” were stolen from the famed 1980 song, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and more recently had a second life as a viral sound on TikTok.
“Upon listening several times to ‘I’ve Seen It,’ representatives of plaintiff came to what they considered to be the obvious and inescapable conclusion that [it] copied in large and significant part the original work … and clearly infringed plaintiff’s copyrights,” lawyers for Mattie Music Group write in their court filings.
The lawsuit, obtained and first reported by Billboard, does not name Dean herself as a defendant; it instead targets her record label, Universal Music Group’s Capitol Records, and her publisher, Sony Music Publishing. The case also takes aim at Kobalt, the publisher of Dean’s co-writer Max Wolfgang; he himself is also not named as a defendant.
Reps for UMG, Sony and Dean herself did not immediately return requests for comment on the accusations. A rep for Kobalt declined to comment.
The Art of Loving, Dean’s second studio album, was a breakout hit for the British singer-songwriter, led by smash singles “Man I Need” and “So Easy (To Fall in Love).” The album reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in January, is currently sitting at No. 11 and has spent 52 weeks and counting on the album chart. In 2025, Dean was named Billboard‘s Rookie of the Year.
Withers, a legendary R&B singer-songwriter behind hits like “Ain’t No Sunshine” and “Lovely Day,” released “Just the Two of Us” in 1980 along with Grover Washington Jr. It eventually won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song and has enjoyed a decades-long run as a well-known song in movies, TV commercials and social media. The artist himself is not involved as a plaintiff in the new lawsuit.
In Thursday’s complaint, Mattie Music says it hired a musicologist, Alexander Stewart, to compare “I’ve Seen It” and “Just the Two of Us.” The publisher says he concluded the two songs “contain substantial similarities in protectable musical expression, including repeated copying of the distinctively protectable melody.”
“The number, character, and arrangement of the shared musical features are so striking that they support an inference that the similarities did not result from coincidence, independent creation, or reliance on common musical elements,” Mattie Music’s lawyers write in their complaint.
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