The singer ‘The Weeknd’, his real name Abel Tesfaye, and his technical team were accused of plagiarizing various elements of a song composed in 2015 to later write the song ‘Call Out My Name’, which was released in 2018.
According to documents published this Wednesday by the music magazine Pitchfork, the Epikker duo made up of Suniel Fox and Henry Strange, accuse the Canadian singer of having appropriated a song that they sent to a collaborator Eric White, aka PNDA of The Weeknd, titled ‘Vibeking’.
It appears nothing ever came of that collaboration, but in 2018, ‘Call Out My Name’ was released. Fox and Strange allege that the defendants “included elements in the ‘Call Out My Name’ musical composition and sound recording that are strikingly and/or substantially similar, if not identical, to original elements from the ‘Vibeking’ musical composition and sound recording, without a licence, authorization, or consent from plaintiffs”.
Fox and Strange’s lawsuit names as defendants Tesfaye and his two co-writers of ‘Call Out My Name’, and his label at Universal Music, all the publishers with a stake in The Weeknd song, and even the writers’ collecting societies and the streaming services that have it in their catalogues.