A Brazilian judge has ruled that an Adele song must be removed from streaming services due to a plagiarism claim by the composer Toninho Geraes.
The track in question is Million Years Ago, which appeared on Adele’s 2015 album, 25. Geraes, a 62-year-old Brazilian songwriter alleges that the Adele track too closely resembles his own 1995 samba hit Mulheres and is seeking royalties to the tune of $160,000 (£127,000) and a songwriting credit.
“It is a landmark for Brazilian music, which has often been copied to compose successful international hits,” Fredimio Trotta, the lawyer for Geraes was quoted as saying by the global news agency, AFP. “International producers and artists who have Brazilian music ‘on their radar’ for possible parasitic use will think twice, given this decision.”
Judge Victor Torres issued the injunction on Friday in Rio de Janeiro’s sixth commercial court, as part of the ongoing plagiarism case. The injunction, confirmed yesterday, requires Sony and Universal to immediately halt the global use, reproduction, distribution, or commercialisation of Million Years Ago on any platform, physical or digital. It’s too late, of course, in one sense – millions of people around the world already have the track on CD or in their collections as a download.
The Brazilian injunction carries a threat that if Sony and Universal ignore the ruling, they will be fined $8000 “per act of non-compliance”. The music companies can, and in all probability will, appeal the decision.
And after that it will be down to the lawyers and the musicologists to work out some sort of settlement.
Anyway, see what you think. Compare this:
With this:
Curiously, it’s not the first time Adele has been accused of plagiarism regarding this very same track. It has been alleged that Million Years Ago is also too similar to a 1985 song called Acilara Tutunmak (Clinging to Pain) by the Kurdish singer, Ahmet Kaya.
Soon after the 25 album was released in late 2015, Turkish social media was swamped by claims that Adele and her co-writer on the track Greg Kurstin swiped the song from Kaya, who died in 2000.
