This wild TikTok conspiracy theory completely turns the Dua Lipa Levitating lawsuit on its head

Last week, it was reported that Dua Lipa and Warner Records are being sued in a Los Angeles court by reggae band Artikal Sound System – who are claiming that her smash hit single Levitating is a direct rip off of their 2017 song Live Your Life. Whilst Dua or her team have not yet commented publicly on the lawsuit, social media was rife with conversation about the similarities between the two songs and theories on what the outcome would be going forward. Could it be possible that such a huge song took direct inspiration or plagiarised from a small band’s relatively unknown song? Well, a TikTok theory has turned the entire Dua Lipa Levitating lawsuit on its head, and here’s why:

A musician on TikTok did some serious research

On March 4th 2022, a musician named Mathias Morte (@mathiasmorte) posted a video to his TikTok discussing the Dua Lipa Levitating lawsuit from a musician’s perspective. He states that Artikal Sound System’s Live Your Life and Dua’s Levitating are in the same key and have the same chord progression, but that it’s not enough to claim similarity in a court of law because so many songs have the same keys and chord progressions. Morte says the vocal rhythm and the melody of the songs are the sections to focus on, but that it’s hard to claim ownership of the individual aspects of a song that make the sound feel so familiar.

@mathiasmorte Reply to @itsshiningsim it’s not THAT far fetched, right? #dualipa #levitating #artikalsoundsystem #mathiasmorte ♬ Levitating – Dua Lipa

The next day, the plot thickened. Morte posted a video saying that he believed the entire lawsuit could be a hoax. In his video, which now has 150,000 likes on TikTok, he theorises that all versions of Live Your Life by Artikal Sound System were only posted to YouTube within the last few days – whilst the lawsuit has been discussed. The only version that wasn’t from the last few days is the one on Soundcloud. However, Morte explains that Soundcloud lets you replace audio files without getting rid of the comments and statistics of the original upload. He claims to have scrolled back to the oldest comments on the Soundcloud upload and the earliest one was from within the last week.

Morte says: “So you’re telling me that Dua Lipa heard this song with zero comments and likely very few listens and then copied it in the exact same key, with similar lyrics, culminating in Artikal Sound System suing two yers later just in time for their new album release?”

But this theory might have already been debunked

Despite Mathias Morte’s deep dive and definitely intriguing theory – it was still overall, just a theory. A conspiracy theory, really, and no way to prove anything. Since his video got traction, Mathias Morte posted another video to his TikTok yesterday which complicates the theory further. In the video, he explained that he’d been contacted by another TikTok music creator called Luxxury who was positive he could prove that Artikal Sound System’s Live Your Life definitely got released in 2017.

@mathiasmorte Reply to @omfgrant 😮‍💨 @luxxuryxx #dualipa #levitating #artikalsoundsystem #mathiasmorte ♬ Levitating – Dua Lipa

The two of them found that you could buy the CD that Live Your Life is on from a certain website, and the CD came out in 2017. Of course, you can’t edit a pressed CD – so Mathias has bought it and is waiting for it to come so he can listen and see if the Live Your Life on the CD has the same similarities to Levitating as the one that’s on the Soundcloud. So until the CD arrives, we wait. And then we will get to see if this TikTok conspiracy theory regarding the Dua Lipa Levitating lawsuit.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

• Dua Lipa is being sued by a band who claim Levitating ‘rips them off’ – here’s all we know

• Levitating isn’t alone: Here are 14 huge hit songs that also had to face plagiarism lawsuits

• Ok, so what did Dua Lipa’s ‘autochthonous’ Albania tweet actually mean