Miley Cyrus Is Being Sued For Allegedly Lifting 'We Can't Stop' Lyrics

It seems like at least as each year, another big copyright lawsuit will hit the pop realm. In the past few years, we've seen Ed Sheeran targeted for both "Photograph" (by the songwriters of Matt Cardle's astonishing) and "Thinking Out Loud" (by the family member of the writer of Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On"), Sam Smith having to pay royalties to Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne, and even rumors of Radiohead suing Lana Del Rey.


The most recent example reportedly demands Miley Cyrus and her 2013 song "We Can't Stop" — specifically the lyrics "We run things / Things don't run we."


According to a Reuters report (via Billboard), Jamaican musician Michael May, whose handle is Flourgon, filed a $300 million lawsuit against Cyrus on Tuesday (March 13), claiming those lyrics are also similar to words from one of his own songs, "We Run Things," from 1988.


In that song, May sings, "We run things / Things no run we." You could hear it at the starting of the song here.


The complaint reportedly mentioned that Cyrus's song "owes the basis of its chart-topping popularity to and its highly-lucrative success to plaintiff May’s protected, unique, creative and original content." It also called for further sales and performances of the song to stop.


This suit is the latest to arrive on the heels of the massive 2015 case that seemingly started a new legal deluge: any time Pharrell and Robin Thicke lost their suit over "Blurred Lines" to Marvin Gaye's children. As Reuters points out, this is the same song that incidentally kept "We Can't Stop" out of the best spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013.