Juice WRLD was hit with a multi-million dollar lawsuit from Yellowcard, claiming the rapper’s hit “Lucid Dreams” copied their 2006 song “Holly Wood Died.”
According to Rolling Stone, the suit alleged that Juice WRLD and his producers knowingly copied “Holly Wood Died,” and that “Lucid Dreams” “directly misappropriates quantitative and qualitatively important portions of [‘Holly Wood Died’] in a manner that is easily recognizable to the ordinary observer.” The report added that “Lucid Dreams” is “not only substantially similar to [‘Holly Wood Died’] but in some places virtually identical.”
Along with Juice WRLD, the suit named co-writer Taz Taylor, producer Nick Mira and their respective publishing entities, as co-defendants. BMG Rights Management, the song’s publisher, was also named, along with the rapper’s record label, Grade A, and its parent company, Interscope. Yellowcard is seeking damages in excess of $15 million.
“Lucid Dreams” was released in May 2018 and became a massive hit for the new rapper. The song is centered around a sample of Sting’s “Shape of My Heart,” but in the new lawsuit, Yellowcard said that although Juice WRLD and his team licensed the song, “they decided to willfully infringe [‘Holly Wood Died’].”
Yellowcard’s lawyer Richard Busch, said in a statement to Rolling Stone, “This was not a lawsuit the guys wanted to file. They put all of the parties on notice to try to resolve it. That notice was pretty much ignored, leaving them with no real choice. As alleged in the complaint, this is not just a generic emo-rap song, but is a blatant copy of significant original compositional elements of ‘Holly Wood Died’ in several respects.”
The suit cited the similarities between the first verses of both songs and included transcriptions of both. Yellowcard claimed there are 18 notes in the “Lucid Dreams” verse that are the same in pitch and synchronicity as “Holly Wood Died,” and eight additional notes that are the same in terms of pitch and almost the same in terms of synchronicity. The suit also noted a “melodic idiosyncrasy” that is allegedly used similarly in both songs called a “melisma,” according to reports.
The suit claimed that the melisma in “Holly Wood Died” appears at the end of the phrase “like razors they cut through the heart,” with the pitch on the word “heart” shifting from C to A. Similarly, in “Lucid Dreams,” the suit said the melisma falls at the end of the line, “I know that you want me dead,” with the word “dead” also sung in the same two pitches, C to A.
Along with listing the similarities between the two tracks, the lawsuit alleged Juice WRLD was familiar with Yellowcard’s work, specifically “Holly Wood Died,” and the album it appeared on, “Lights and Sounds.”
They said the rapper would have known of their work based on prior interviews where he mentioned his inspiration behind his emo-rap style and artists he enjoyed.
“Upon information and belief, based upon his current age, these initial events would have occurred in approximately 2006,” the suit claimed. “Thus, upon information and belief, at the time Defendant Juice WRLD began studying the Emo genre of music, ‘Holly Wood Died’ would have been recently released,” the suit said.
