Juice Wrld, a 19-year-old Chicago emo rapper has seen 4x RIAA Platinum and the top of the Billboard Top 100 with his track “Lucid Dreams”.
The song contains..in the words of the producer Nick Mira, not a sample but “an interpolation” of a Sting song ‘Shape of My Heart’. Sting’s team has since has claimed 85% of the “Lucid Dreams” royalties.
The newest claim comes from pop-punk band Yellowcard. The band seeks $15 million because they believe the chorus of “Lucid Dreams” and the verse of their song “Holly Wood Died” are the same.
The suit claims there are melodic elements in “Lucid Dreams” and “Holly Wood Died” that are “not only substantially similar, but… in places are virtually identical.” The suit prominently cites the similarities between the first verses of both songs, and includes transcriptions of each, claiming there are 18 notes in the “Lucid Dreams” verse that are the same in pitch and synchronicity as “Holly Wood Died,” and eight additional notes that are the same in terms of pitch and almost the same in terms of synchronicity.
The suit also highlights a “melodic idiosyncrasy” that is allegedly used similarly in both “Holly Wood Died” and “Lucid Dreams” — a “melisma,” which is a string of different notes used to sing a single syllable of text.
The suit claims that the melisma in “Holly Wood Died” appears at the end of the phrase “like razors they cut through the heart,” with the pitch on “heart” shifting from C to A; in “Lucid Dreams,” the suit claims, the melisma falls at the end of the line, “I know that you want me dead,” with the word “dead” also sung in the same two pitches, C to A.