Cassandra Cain Lovebot 🇲🇽

Bruno Mars sang "I should have bought you flowers." Ten years later Miley Cyrus sang "I can buy myself flowers," and a firm that bought a piece of his song is suing her for it. In the video below, Miley says she never expected "Flowers" to even really be successful. The song is "When I Was Your Man," Bruno's 2013 ballad. A firm called Tempo Music bought the share of one of its co-writers, Philip Lawrence. Bruno Mars is not part of the lawsuit. Tempo sued in September 2024. Its complaint says "Flowers" "duplicates numerous melodic, harmonic, and lyrical elements" of the older song. Then: "'Flowers' would not exist without 'When I Was Your Man.'" Tempo wants lost profits, statutory damages and an order to stop the song that set a Spotify record, 100 million streams in one week. Five months after the suit, Warner Music Group bought control of Tempo, in a deal Bloomberg reported at about $450 million. Her label, Sony, is a defendant too, so the firm suing her now answers to Sony's rival. Her lawyers started with the paperwork. One co-writer's share, they argued, could not let a buyer sue alone: "That is a fatal and incurable defect in plaintiff's claim." Tempo's lawyer, Alex Weingarten, called them "bogus technical arguments." In March 2025, Judge Dean Pregerson sided with Tempo: "Tempo as co-owner, in lieu of Lawrence, can sue for infringement without joining the other co-owners." So her lawyers went after the music. The chords, they wrote, are "merely a commonplace 'circle of fifths' chord progression," and her song is about "a woman rejoicing in her independence and self-reliance." They also pointed out that streams of "When I Was Your Man" went up nearly 20% after "Flowers" came out. Miley tells it her own way. Her Malibu house burned down in the 2018 Woolsey fire, and she says she "never would have written the song without the Woolsey fires." Tempo says no Bruno song, no "Flowers." Miley says no fire, no "Flowers." This summer, every trial date came off the calendar while a judge decides whether a jury ever hears it. A judge already ruled that Tempo can sue. No judge has ruled that Miley copied anything. Did Miley Cyrus take too much from Bruno Mars's song, or is Tempo, a firm that bought a piece of it, trying to cash in on her biggest hit?