Olivia Dean is facing a new lawsuit alleging that her song “I’ve Seen It” copied Bill Withers’ iconic track “Just the Two of Us”.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Mattie Music Group, which publishes Withers’ music catalogue, filed the lawsuit in California on Thursday.
The company claims that the similarities between Dean’s 2025 song and Withers’ 1981 hit are “obvious and inescapable”.
According to the complaint, the number and arrangement of the shared musical elements are so striking that they suggest the similarities were not the result of coincidence, independent creation or the use of common musical elements.
Mattie Music Group said it first heard “I’ve Seen It” in August 2026 and listened to the song several times before hiring musicologist Alexander Stewart, Ph.D., to conduct a comparison of the two tracks.
The lawsuit claims Stewart’s analysis found that Dean’s song “copied in large and significant part” from “Just the Two of Us” and used its “distinctively protectable melody”.
The publisher alleges that it contacted the defendants in August but claims they continued to reproduce, distribute, license, publicly perform and commercially exploit Dean’s song.
The defendants named in the lawsuit include Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America, Inc.
Dean and her co-writers, Bastian Langebaek and Max Wolfgang, have not been named as defendants. However, the lawsuit alleges that the three had a “reasonable opportunity to encounter” Withers’ song before writing “I’ve Seen It”.
Written by Withers, Ralph MacDonald and William Salter, “Just the Two of Us” was released in 1981 and became a major commercial success. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song.
Withers died in March 2020 at the age of 81.
Mattie Music Group is seeking damages, with the amount to be determined at trial.
