But it doesn’t need to. It’s plain as day.
On October 1, Bill Withers’s publisher sued Olivia Dean’s label and publishers. The claim is that her song “I’ve Seen It” copies “Just the Two of Us.”
Here are both:
First, Grover Washington Jr.’s record (1981) with Bill Withers singing, which reached number two on the Hot 100. I used to have it this on vinyl (a really good album that I’m going to spend the rest of the day with now).
And this is Dean’s song, from The Art of Loving, released in September 2025. Listen for modest similarity right at the top, and then compelling similarity at around thirty-five seconds in.
A good number of people out there may think first of Will Smith’s 1997 “Just the Two of Us.” Same underlying material.
Before we talk about the notes, who’s suing here?
Publisher Mattie Music Group is. They say Withers wrote “Just the Two of Us” with Ralph MacDonald and William Salter while under contract to it. It evidently owns the copyright. The defendants meanwhile, and sorta in kind, are Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony/ATV Songs and Kobalt — publishers and labels. So while Dean wrote “I’ve Seen It” with Bastian Langebæk and Max Wolfgang, none of the three is named as a defendant. Give that time.
The particulars in the music — specific notes and whatnot — get short shrift in the complaint. It lays out the basics; in early August 2026, the plaintiff’s people listened to Dean’s song “several times” and reached what they call “the obvious and inescapable conclusion” that it copied the original. As they put it, the works share “substantial similarities in protectable musical expression.” Later it says the shared features are “so striking” in “number, character, and arrangement” that they “support an inference that the similarities did not result from coincidence, independent creation, or reliance on common musical elements.”
Good for them, not expressing certainty. Similarities like these can often be coincidence, and “certainty” needn’t be the bar. The bar should be, how likely or unlikely is copying, and on what basis? The odds here, to me, tell the story well enough—a fifteen-note phrase, pitchwise, rhythmwise, and otherwise over harmony that’s almost the same, leads me to that inference too.
So, I predict this will go away one way or another fairly quickly. (Today is Oct 3. See you when it does.)
What the complaint tells, not shows
In writing they refer to no pitch, interval, rhythm, key, or chord. It does not say which phrase of “Just the Two of Us” is the claimed melody, or where in “I’ve Seen It” it shows up. T’is enough tho. T’will serve.
Copyright infringement is originality (Just The Two Of Us and the elements that matter here need to be original and protectable by copyright), access (Dean and co need to have heard Just The Two Of Us to have copied it.), then copying (they need to have “copied” it), and substantiality. This all needs to be enough for the law to find it a wrongdoing.
Access will be hard to disclaim. “Just the Two of Us” won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song at the 24th Annual Grammy Awards and was nominated for Song of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
I have only listened a few times, probably spending longer writing this than I spent filtering for plausibly arguable commonalities or building blocks that might support a more coincidence-oriented explanation. I can say this much right away: Between how recognizable “Just the Two of Us” is and the specifics of the commonalities in a verse of “I’ve Seen It,” I wouldn’t have been surprised if it were an interpolation. Interpolation is by nature intentional, placing an existing melody into your own piece.
I’m searching for a musicologist’s sort of reference, like when the cannons go off at the end of the 1812 Overture, or folk melodies in Gustav Holst’s Suite In F, but Mya’s Gangsta’s Paradise quoting Islands in the Stream is fine.
The similarity is fairly plain. If you listened, you almost certainly heard it. Wonder what you’re hearing?:
Verse melody. The shared melodic passage runs two measures and about 15 consecutive notes. I’ll write it out on Monday. It’ll be two music staves with almost every note alike.
Verse harmony. It’s essentially the same chords. “I’ve Seen It”: vi-III-vi-I-IV. ” Abd Just the Two of Us”: vi-III-vi-(v-I7)-IV. Note my bolded parenthetical. The only difference I hear is that Just The Two Of Us employs a “ii-V of four” before that last IV chord (v, then I7) before arriving on IV. That insertion is as stock as jazzy progressions get by the way. “Stock” is inversely correlated to “original and protectable.” But this isn’t about the chords by themselves. The chords are the same skeleton, and on their own common property, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t count. We have it plus the melody here.
Just The Two Of Us isn’t all I hear in there by the way. Dean’s song sounds influenced by The Beatles “In My Life” as well. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m influenced by it all the time. But it’s interesting nonetheless. I’ll get to why.
The stronger similarity to Just The Two Of Us is in that ninth vocal phrase around 35 seconds.
Back to the Beatles thing though. Right at the top, her progression is more or less this one. It’s also presented similarly. I can’t be bothered right now getting into how that does and doesn’t matter. Just see if you can hear it:
And that, I’d suggest, provides the chord Dean uses instead.
At the risk of being circular.
Again, the Grover track does that two-five of four that Dean doesn’t. Before Withers lands on IV, he visits the minor v and then the I7. Dean takes the straighter path one more like The Beatles.
Educated hunches, connecting dots, in real time, my hypotheses, a fun exercise on a Saturday morning:
Say perhaps, Dean doesn’t know this is even at all inspired by Just The Two Of Us, but it is (my opinion), even if not consciously, and she doesn’t go searching, again even subconsciously for its ii-V of four because she is knowingly or unknowingly ALSO inspired by “In My Life,” and that record already contains the similarly functional V of IV. The Beatles’ verse runs I V vi I7 IV iv I. The A7 into D is the same move, more or less.
Listen to her initial melodies as well. The “Just The Two Of Us” rhythmic device is evident from the start, though set to the Beatles-like progression. Her melodic phrases end as “In My Life’s” phrases end, going from Sol up to Mi. (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do).
Musicologize readers may recognize that I’m engaging a little in the sort of dot-connecting I usually criticize. It smacks of something a Danny Kahneman might’ve have called building the story from the evidence available but not wincing at what it might be less studiously filling in the blanks with. So, the grain of salt again. I’m musing practically in real time with due doubt that the pattern makes a compelling hypothesis; the pieces reinforce each other. The arc, the cadences and the missing chord all make a certain amount of “how a song gets written” sense. A missing chord has more than one explanation. To even call it “missing” is logically presumptuous. She may have followed the Beatles, she may not. She may have sorta heard it in her head but opted for something different from the Withers.
Musicoloogize readers would also know I don’t leap to substantial similarity lightly.
Here, I kinda think we’re in the conservatory with the candlestick, and sheet music to both In My Life and Just The Two Of Us is on the music stand.
