Miley Cyrus Sued over "Flowers"

Miley Cyrus has been hit with a new lawsuit over her Grammy-winning banger “Flowers.”

In a new lawsuit filed Monday in federal court in Los Angeles, Tempo Music Investments company claimed the hit song includes unauthorized “exploitation” of several elements of Bruno Mars’ 2013 “When I Was Your Man”.

Sony Music Publishing, Apple, Target, Walmart, and several other companies have also been named in the lawsuit as defendants accused of distributing “Flowers.” Mars is not named as a plaintiff in the suit.

The complaint also named Cyrus’ fellow songwriters Gregory Hein and Michael Pollack co-defendants.

Tempo Music alleged that it owns a portion of U.S. copyrights to Mars’ song after acquiring it from Philip Lawrence, who co-wrote it along with Mars, Ari Levine, and Andrew Wyatt.

“Any fan of Bruno Mars’ ‘When I Was Your Man’ knows that Miley Cyrus’ ‘Flowers’ did not achieve all of that success on its own. ‘Flowers’ duplicates numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements of ‘When I Was Your Man,’ including the melodic pitch design and sequence of the verse, the connecting bass-line, certain bars of the chorus, certain theatrical music elements, lyric elements, and specific chord progressions,” the lawsuit claimed.

“It is undeniable based on the combination and number of similarities between the two recordings that ‘Flowers’ would not exist without ‘When I Was Your Man,’” it added. “With ‘Flowers,’ Cyrus, Hein, and Pollack have created a derivative work of ‘When I Was Your Man’ without authorization.”

In February, Cyrus won her first Grammy for “Flowers,” a track from her eighth album Endless Summer Vacation. The hit song was written after her divorce from actor Liam Hemsworth and was largely seen as a declaration of independence.

Tempo Music is seeking damages in an amount to be determined at trial.

The company is also demanding a court order prohibiting Cyrus and the other defendants from reproducing, distributing, or publicly performing “Flowers.”