Once again Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson have been called out for plagiarizing their 2014 Grammy winning hit "Uptown Funk," this time by the '70s trio The Sequence, TMZ reports.
The Sequence is reportedly suing Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson for ripping off their 1979 single "Funk You Up." The Bruno Mars song spent a whopping 14-weeks at the No. 1 spot on the charts. It was played so much that turning on the radio and hearing "uptown funk me up" repeated over and over again still takes me back to a dark place. Apparently, a number of artists feel the same way.
Although rumors began circulating as early as 2016 that The Sequence felt as though they had been plagiarized, they did not take any legal action until recently. The track "Funk You Up" earned the group a number 15 spot on the Billboard Top 50 Singles chart, the third rap song to reach that threshold. In court documents obtained by TMZ, The Sequence is claiming that "Uptown Funk" has "significant and substantially similar compositional elements" to their '70s hit, and they're not the first, second, or third group to make these kinds of claims.
Accusations of copyright infringement have been lodged against Mars and Ronson by a number of musicians, including a group named Collage for their song "Young Girls," Zapp's infamous "More Bounce to the Ounce," and the Gap Band for their 1979 track "Oops Upside Your Head." The latter was added to the credits of "Uptown Funk" in order to avoid a lengthy, costly lawsuit.
The Sequence is asking for a trial by jury, and an unspecified amount of dough. Let's be real, pop music these days isn't consistently original, nor is it profound, however the trend that's been developing ever since the chart-topper was released in 2014 is apparent, and Mars and Ronson are still dealing with the repercussions.
Bruno's spokespeople have yet to respond to the news.
