Lawyers for Miley Cyrus have filed a motion seeking to end a copyright infringement lawsuit over her 2023 hit Flowers before it reaches trial. The suit alleges Flowers lifted protected elements from Bruno Mars’ 2013 ballad When I Was Your Man.
Tempo, the music rights-acquiring fund launched by private equity giant Providence in 2019, sued Cyrus in September 2024. The firm said it acquired a percentage of the copyright in When I Was Your Man from Philip Lawrence, one of the song’s co-writers, in 2020.
The original lawsuit named Miley Cyrus and Sony Music Entertainment as defendants, alongside Flowers co-writers Gregory “Aldae” Hein and Michael Pollack, as well as publishers Concord Music Publishing and MCEO Inc.
In an unusual move, the lawsuit also targeted music streaming services and retailers that Tempo Music said sold either physical or digital copies of Flowers, or made it available for streaming. That includes Amazon Music, Apple Music, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SoundCloud, TIDAL, and Xandrie, owner of the France-focused streaming service Qobuz.
Live Nation was also named in the lawsuit for “selling copies of the song through Cyrus’s official online store,” and Disney, for “releasing a documentary concert series featuring Cyrus’ performance of Flowers on March 10, 2023.”
Bruno Mars has not joined the suit.
(Warner Music Group acquired a controlling stake in Tempo from Providence in February 2025. Providence remains a minority investor. Notably, Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp. is also named as a defendant in the case.)
The plaintiff in the case is now listed as Tempo Secured Music Rights Collateral, LLC, rather than Tempo Music Investments, LLC, which filed the original complaint.
At the time the lawsuit was filed, lawyers for Tempo said: “Any fan of Bruno Mars’ When I Was Your Man knows that Miley Cyrus’ Flowers did not achieve all of that success on its own.”
However, most recently, Cyrus’ lawyers pushed back on Tempo’s claims. Their motion, which you can read here, argues that Tempo’s musicologist, Anthony Ricigliano, failed to research prior art or filter out unprotectable elements before drawing his comparisons.
“As an initial, fatal defect, Plaintiff cannot rely on Mr. Ricigliano under the extrinsic test because he did not research prior art or filter out unprotectable elements,” Cyrus’ lawyers wrote.
They also argued that what Ricigliano identifies as similar are pitch sequences, not melodies, and that pitch sequences carry no copyright protection. The chord progressions he flags, including a standard “circle of fifths” chord progression, are commonplace building blocks that no one can own.
Cyrus’ legal team said: “[P]itch sequences are not protectable. Instead, ‘it is necessary to distinguish between an abstract sequence of pitches and a melody’… ‘While an eight-note melody may be copyrightable, the abstract eight-note pitch sequence that is a component of the melody is not’.”
“Mr. Ricigliano admits that Man and Flowers do not share any melodies. Instead, he claims they share some pitches—that is, tones without regard to duration—in otherwise different and unprotectable pitch sequences.”
“[P]itch sequences are not protectable. Instead, ‘it is necessary to distinguish between an abstract sequence of pitches and a melody.'”
Miley Cyrus’ legal team
On the song’s lyrics, Tempo submitted a report from Jeff Rovin, a novelist brought in as a “rebuttal expert,” who compared the lyrics as literary works, examining characters, setting, plot, sequence of events, pace, mood, and dialogue.
Cyrus’ lawyers said: Rovin “relies on ‘similarities at such a high level of abstraction that the similarities do not involve protected expression’.”
Rovin claimed similarities in characters “because they lack names,” in setting “because Man and Flowers are set in the present and each refers to a home, in plots as “the narrator looks back at a relationship that ended and the reality of moving on,” and in sequence of events because both songs “each include flashbacks and ‘flash-forwards’ to the present.”
“No one owns these words, which are commonplace tropes in breakup songs.”
Miley Cyrus’ legal team
Cyrus’ team acknowledged: “The only concrete similarities between Flowers’ ‘I can buy myself flowers’ and Man’s ‘That I should have bought you flowers,’ are the words ‘I,’ ‘buy’/‘bought,’ and ‘flowers’; between Flowers’ ‘And I can hold my own hand’ and Man’s ‘And held your hand’ are the words ‘and,’ ‘hold’/‘held,’ and ‘hand’; between Flowers’ ‘Talk to myself for hours’ and Man’s ‘Should have gave you all my hours’ is the word ‘hours’; and between Flowers’ ‘I can take myself dancing’ and Man’s ‘Take you to every party cause all you wanted to do was dance’ are the words ‘take’ and ‘dancing’/‘dance.’”
“No one owns these words, which are commonplace tropes in breakup songs,” they added.
“Here, all of the lyrics Plaintiff relies upon flow naturally from the fact both are breakup songs.” Cyrus’ attorneys cited Justin Bieber‘s 2011 song That Should Be Me as another breakup song that also refers to flowers, holding hands, taking an ex-lover places, and talking for hours.
“Man, a slow piano ballad, is a breakup song from the perspective of a man who regrets not doing various things he believes could have saved his relationship. On the other hand, Flowers, an upbeat, danceable pop song, is a breakup song from the perspective of a woman rejoicing in her independence and self-reliance.”
“Man, a slow piano ballad, is a breakup song from the perspective of a man who regrets not doing various things he believes could have saved his relationship. On the other hand, Flowers, an upbeat, danceable pop song, is a breakup song from the perspective of a woman rejoicing in her independence and self-reliance.”
Miley Cyrus’ legal team
Tempo’s lawsuit alleges that the lyrics have “a meaningful connection.” Notably, after Flowers was released, streaming of When I Was Your Man rose nearly 20%, which Cyrus’ team cites as evidence that the newer song “did not result in any cognizable market harm whatsoever” to Mars’ song.
Separately, Cyrus’ lawyers argue that even if similarities existed, Flowers would qualify as fair use. They contend the song can reasonably be perceived as transformative commentary on Man — turning its male narrator’s regret into a message of female self-reliance. They also note that Man‘s streaming rose after Flowers‘ release, undermining any claim of market harm.
The motion is scheduled for hearing on May 5 before Judge Mónica Ramírez Almadani.
Cyrus’ legal team had already asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit in November 2024, citing the small number of plaintiffs who allege Flowers ripped off the Bruno Mars song.
Flowers was the biggest-selling single globally in 2023, according to IFPI. It spent a total of eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and 57 weeks at the top of the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.
When I Was Your Man, released a decade before Flowers, topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2013, and has been certified Platinum 11 times by the RIAA.
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