“I don’t know what the deal is with that,” says Mark Ronson. “When you have a hit people always come out of the woodwork to try to claim it. Whatever. I’ve never had a big hit before so I guess that’s what happens.”
Indeed, ‘Uptown Funk’, the super-producer’s hit collaboration with Bruno Mars already has its share of co-writer credits. In addition to the writers who worked on the tune, a looming court case tacked on five extra authors early last year.
As Tone Deaf reported at the time, Ronson and co were forced to add the members of The Gap Band as co-writers on ‘Uptown Funk’ after the band’s legal team noticed similarities between Ronson’s song and The Gap Band’s 1979 hit ‘Oops Upside Your Head’.
The band was added to the list of credits to avoid a potential lawsuit in the wake of the Marvin Gaye estate’s successful copyright infringement suit against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke over their song ‘Blurred Lines’.
“There’s nothing we intentionally or unintentionally took from that song, but that was the settlement we were told to follow… after the ‘Blurred Lines’ thing, everybody was like, ‘You better be careful’,” Ronson told the Daily Telegraph, via News Corp.
Now, 1980s girl group The Sequence are accusing Ronson and his collaborators of copying their 1979 hit ‘Funk You Up’. As News Corp reports, Kali Bowyer, a representative for the trio claims there are notable similarities between the two songs.
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Interestingly, Bowyer claims the hook from ‘Uptown Funk’ resembles the hook in ‘Funk You Up’, the same complaint The Gap Band made. Essentially, any potential lawsuit would presumably have to prove the same hook was stolen from two songs.
According to TMZ, Bowyer and her clients are deliberating over whether to file such a suit. Serbian pop star Viktorija opted not to file a suit after she claimed ‘Uptown Funk’ infringed on her 1984 single ‘Dark Streets Are Not For Girls’.
