Post Malone disputes claim made by songwriter suing him over ‘Circles’ contribution
nme.comPost Malone has disputed claims made by a songwriter who is suing him over his 2019 hit ‘Circles’.Tyler Armes filed a federal lawsuit in California in April 2020, listing Post (real name Austin Post), Post’s producer Frank Dukes and Universal Music Group as defendants, and claims he is seeking co-writer and co-producer credits, as well as prospective and retroactive royalties and other money owed from the ‘Hollywood’s Bleeding’ track.On the same day, Post filed his own suit, with the rapper asking a New York Federal Judge to rule that Armes has no claim to the song’s copyright and did not participate in writing it.“It is an age-old story in the music business that when a song earns the type of runaway success that ‘Circles’ has garnered, and individuals will come out of the woodwork falsely claim to take credit for the song, and demand unwarranted and unearned windfall profits from the song,” reads Malone’s complaint.In a new court filing (via Rolling Stone), Post claims that Armes did not contribute anything “original” to the song, just “an admittedly extremely commonplace guitar chord progression,” and potentially a “fragment of a guitar melody that Armes claims he sung to Post”.
Armes claims he was initially offered five per cent of the song’s royalties for his work on ‘Circles’, but that was removed when he tried to negotiate a bigger cut.Post’s new court documents read: “Armes admitted that his contributions did not even rise to the level of originality, which is also required in addition to the fixation requirement.
He either conceded that his ideas were commonplace musical devices or failed to meet his burden to demonstrate any originality otherwise.
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