[updated 10/5/26]
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 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 lot of people 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. ‘Tis enough tho. ‘Twill 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. Like when the cannons go off at the end of the 1812 Overture, or folk melodies in Gustav Holst’s Second Suite in F, or Mya’s Ghetto Superstar quoting Dolly Parton and Islands in the Stream. (I know it’s the Bee Gees. Pipe down out there.)
Here’s the crux
The similarity is fairly plain. If you listened, you almost certainly heard it. Here’s what you’re hearing:
The melody. The shared melodic passage starts around 35 seconds in and 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.
[updated 4:30pm, and today is still Monday, although I didn’t get to this until late in the day]
The harmony. One of these songs is in a major key and the other in a minor key, not an exonerating factor. I’m showing both transposed to a staff with no sharps or flats to make it as simple as possible to see the two melodies side by side. If anything, it strikes me as more conspicuous that the phrase we’re most focused on uses similar chords and much of the same harmonic functionality in related keys.
The chords aren’t identical obviously, but they’re plenty correlated, and I’ll soften the distinction between, for example, that Just The Two Of Us employs a “ii-V” going to that final F chord, an insertion that’s as stock as jazzy progressions get by the way. “I’ve Seen It” uses D7 in there instead, which is a bit of a “Stairway” means of setting up its final F chord.
Dissimilarities do matter. Another is obviously the first chords. But the compositional choice to start on a tonic function (Am) or a subdominant function (Fmaj7) doesn’t move the needle a ton in the context of that melody.
The melody is obviously virtually identical even if you don’t read music. If you see something not quite lining up perfectly, look just right nearby; it’ll usually be there. So it’s that AND the harmony.
Chord progressions aren’t especially protectable on their own, just like rhythms. Meanwhile, it makes no probability-based sense to say never about either. Gets my goat. But unless you’re talking about a very long string of harmonies, they’re bound to be pretty “stock” in some way.
And this, well, just off the top of my head, David Benoit put out a tune called Freedom At Midnight in 1987 that is Am – E7 – Am – Gm7 C7 – F. That’s what Dean’s would be with the two-five insert. (ah heck I’ll post Benoit too).
But this isn’t about the chords on their own. We wouldn’t be having this conversation. The melody is essentially identical, along with some hard-to-ignore little details that compound matters. And those chords share a skeleton. Progressions are common property, but that doesn’t mean the similarity doesn’t count.
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.
Right at the top, her progression is more or less this one. It’s also presented similarly in textural terms. I can’t be bothered right now getting into how that does and doesn’t matter. Just see if you can hear it:
But inspiration is not infringement.
Four measures, just one divergence. Access to anything on the Red Album? (Rubber Soul, a stretch?) Reasonably inferable even in 2026? Arguably so. Combined with the instrumentation? And more as I’ll get to…?
Again, the Grover track does that two-five of six that Dean doesn’t. Before Withers lands on our transposed F he visits the Gm and then the C7. Dean takes the straighter path, one more in keeping with this Beatles-like beginning, one chord every two beats.
And to boot, the “I’ve Seen It” progression in those conspicuous two measures is a bit like “Stairway to Heaven,” and like “Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing.”
Educated hunches, connecting dots, in real time, my hypotheses, all a fun exercise on a Saturday morning.
While we’re here, 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 at the top of “I’ve Seen It” end as “In My Life’s” phrases end, going from Sol up to Mi. (do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do). Again, not compelling. Beatles tunes are songwriting fabric.
Musicologize readers may note that I’m engaging a little in the sort of dot-connecting I might as readily criticize. It smacks of something a Danny Kahneman might’ve 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 puzzle pieces reinforcing 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. The D7 there is cool. I mentioned Stairway, and Don’t You Worry Bout. I might mention more Beatles influence from Eight Days A Week. It’s folksy. It can be dorian or lydian, depending. House Of The Rising Sun? So, I shouldn’t call the two-five “missing.” She may have followed the Beatles, Stairway, Stevie, and may not. Also very imaginable though, sorta hearing Just The Two Of Us, on some level, and opting for something else.
Readers would also know I don’t leap to substantial similarity lightly or often. Here, I think we’re back in the Clue conservatory, with sheet music for both In My Life and Just The Two Of Us on the music stand. And yes, to me, the latter appears to be the candlestick.
