The Weeknd and Nicolás Jaar sued for copyright infringement on track, ‘Call Out My Name’

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The Weeknd and Nicolás Jaar have been sued for copyright infringement.

The pair, alongside Toronto producer Frank Dukes, have been sued by producers Suniel Fox and Henry Strange over claims that The Weeknd’s 2018 track ‘Call Out My Name’ is “strikingly and/or substantially similar, if not identical” to Fox and Strange’s 2015 song ‘Vibeking’.

Featuring a sample of Nicolás Jaar’s 2016 song ‘Killing Time’, ‘Call Out My Name’ features on The Weeknd’s first EP, ‘My Dear Melancholy’. It earned the largest first-day Spotify stream count of any song released in 2018. As of March 2020, it had sold 3,000,000 copies in the United States alone.

According to a Pitchfork report, the lawsuit concerned specific compositional parallels between the two tracks.

“Both works are in a minor key,” the suit reads. “Both works are in a 6/8 meter that is less common in popular music. Both works are played at a similar tempo. And both works use features of electronica, ambience, pop, hip-hop, rock, and R&B to achieve a particular atmospheric and melancholic sound.”

‘Vibeking’ is currently unavailable on any streaming services. Watch the video for ‘Call Out My Name’ below.

Earlier this year, DJ Lag and will.i.am reportedly reached an undisclosed settlement agreement following accusations that the latter had plagiarised the former’s track, ‘Ice Drop’.