Abstract
September 16, 2024, Tempo Music Investments LLC filed a copyright infringement complaint against Miley Cyrus. The complaint is due to the striking similarities between Cyrus’s song, Flowers, and Bruno Mars’s song When I Was Your Man. Tempo Music attributes Cyrus’ success with Flowers in 2023 to When I Was Your Man’s existence and not purely from the song itself. In discussing this lawsuit, this comment explores how likely a fair use claim is to succeed, while also analyzing how the parody fair use defense is currently applied to songwriting. Additionally, it also discussed parodies vs. answer/response songs, specifically what the differences. Fair use and parodies with music are not completely novel topics. However, there has been a recent surge of songs that reference previous songs known as Answer Songs, often not by the original songwriter, and this topic has not been addressed by the Supreme Court. This comment advises the extension of the parody fair use analysis to answer songs, specifically shown by a case regarding another medium (specifically a novel), which functioned very similarly to an answer song.
Repository Citation
Emmeline Eike,
Can Miley Cyrus Really Buy Her Own Flowers: An Analysis of Answer Songs in Relation to Fair Use,
30
Marq. Intell. Prop. & Innovation L. Rev.
151
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/ipilr/vol30/iss1/7