Olivia Dean stands accused of emulating Bill Withers’ evergreen Just the Two of Us with a track from her album, I’ve Seen It.
Representatives for Mattie Music Group, the publisher overseeing Withers’ posthumous catalog, have filed a copyright infringement complaint in a Los Angeles federal court.
In the filing, they contend that the parallels between Dean’s track—drawn from her 2025 album The Art of Loving—and Withers’ 1981 Grammy-winning R&B hit are “obvious and inescapable”.
They argued that a musicologist found “substantial similarities” and copying of a “distinctively protectable melody” when reviewing the songs.
“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,” they wrote in the lawsuit, according to Rolling Stone.
The lawsuit names Dean’s record label Capitol Records, its parent company Universal Music Group, and Dean’s publishing companies as the defendants rather than the British singer and her co-writers Bastian Langebaek and Max Wolfgang as individuals.
Mattie Music Group reps claim they notified the defendants of the alleged infringement in August, but they continued to distribute and license the song without updating the credits. They want damages to be decided by a jury trial.
I’ve Seen It is the closing song on Dean’s breakthrough second album, which features hits including Man I Need and So Easy (To Fall in Love). The Art of Loving was named Album of the Year at the BRIT and MOBO Awards earlier this year.
Withers, also known for songs including Ain’t No Sunshine and Lean on Me, died in 2020 at the age of 81.
