British soul-pop star Olivia Dean has become the latest musician caught up in a high-stakes copyright battle after a publisher representing part of the Bill Withers catalogue accused one of her songs of copying a 1981 classic.
Mattie Music Group, doing business as Bleunig Music, filed a copyright infringement lawsuit on October 1 in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. The complaint alleges that Dean's song I've Seen It, the closing track of her chart-topping 2025 album The Art of Loving, copies protected structural and melodic elements from Just the Two of Us, the 1981 hit sung by Bill Withers over Grover Washington Jr.'s saxophone and written by Withers, Ralph MacDonald and William Salter.
Notably, the lawsuit does not name Dean as a defendant. Neither are her co-writers Bastian Langebaek and Max Wolfgang. Instead, Mattie Music sued the companies it says distributed the recording or profited from its publishing rights: Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America, plus unnamed Doe defendants. The case, numbered 2:26-cv-11383, seeks damages, the defendants' profits and a permanent injunction.
According to the complaint, representatives for Mattie Music listened to Dean's song several times in August and reached what they described as the obvious conclusion that it had taken the melody of Just the Two of Us. The publisher then hired noted musicologist Alexander Stewart to compare the compositions; his forensic analysis concluded that the shared musical architecture demonstrated substantial similarities in protectable artistic expression, including repeated use of a distinctive melody from the Withers song.
The 27-year-old Dean is one of the fastest-rising figures in British music, having won the Best New Artist statuette at the 2026 Grammy Awards earlier this year. None of the defendants had publicly responded to the allegations at the time the suit was reported.
The case arrives amid an ongoing wave of music copyright litigation that has reshaped how artists approach songwriting. The industry's landmark moments include the Blurred Lines verdict against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams over Marvin Gaye's Got to Give It Up, and the long-running disputes over Ed Sheeran's catalog, including the Shape of You case he ultimately won. The musicologist-heavy approach in the Dean case follows a familiar pattern: experts dissect pitch, melody, harmony and rhythm to argue whether similarities reflect copying or coincidence.
If the defendants answer with their own musicological evidence, the case could become a test of how much protection a melodic contour enjoys when surrounded by commonplace pop elements. For now, it sits in Los Angeles federal court, awaiting the defendants' response.