Suggesting one of the key drawbacks of writing a song that attempts to capture everything great about ’70s and ’80s funk, and then distill it down into one tight, commercial little package, Mark Ronson is once again getting sued over allegations that he ripped someone off in the process of writing 2014's hot summer jam, “Uptown Funk.”
This time, the funky litigants are the rights owners to Roger Troutman’s “More Bounce To The Ounce,” which, they claim, contains copied elements like a “three-note introductory talk-box melody ‘doubled’ on guitar” and “talk-box vocalization of the word ‘doh.’” (Listen to the two songs, meanwhile, and it’s pretty easy to pick out places where they apparently overlap.) The suit itself—which you can read in full over on Pitchfork—also cites a number of interviews Ronson gave, in which he mentioned that Troutman’s music was an influence on his work.
This is something like the fourth time the massively popular song has been accused of plagiarism; in the past, he’s been hit by complaints from Serbian artist Viktorjia and ’80s funk group Collage, who said it was “almost indistinguishable” from their “Young Girls.” Most notably, members of The Gap Band successfully settled with Ronson over similarities to their “Oops! Upside Your Head” in 2015, earning them a songwriting credit (and residuals) for the mega-selling song.