Songwriters hit back at Lizzo over ‘Truth Hurts’
A trio of songwriters who claim that they deserve credit for Lizzo’s record-breaking single “ Truth Hurts” have fired back at a pre-emptive lawsuit filed by Lizzo in October last year.
Brothers Justin and Jeremiah Raisen, and a third songwriter, Justin Rothman filed their countersuit on Friday, February 28, at the US District Court for the Central District of California, requesting that the court find them to be joint authors of “Truth Hurts”.
“This case concerns Lizzo’s bad faith, unprincipled attempt to deny songwriting and producer credits and royalties to counterclaimants,” said the suit.
In October last year, in an Instagram post, the Raisens’ claimed they helped write the lyrics for “Truth Hurts” in a studio session with Lizzo and Rothman in April 2017. They also alleged that during the session, another songwriter “pulled up a meme on his phone based on a tweet that read: ‘I did a DNA test and found out I’m 100% that bitch’”.
Shortly after, Lizzo responded with a preemptive suit, asking the court to grant a declaration that both the Raisens and Rothman didn’t collaborate with her on “Truth Hurts” and denying claims that it was Jeremiah’s idea to include the line from the meme in the song.
Lizzo has also faced accusations of plagiarism over the use of the meme in her song, with Mina Lioness (who composed the tweet) taking to Twitter to criticise the singer, after learning that Lizzo had applied to register ‘100% That Bitch’ as a trademark covering merchandise and music.
Lizzo subsequently announced that she had credited Mina Lioness as a writer of “Truth Hurts”.
In their countersuit, the trio of songwriters claimed that Lizzo had copied substantial, significant original creative expression from “Healthy”, a song that Lizzo and the songwriters during the April 2017 session, to create “Truth Hurts”.
The songwriters also cited a musicology report—commissioned by the brothers' record label—which concluded that “‘Truth Hurts’ would not exist in its present form without the existence of and the borrowing from ‘Healthy’”.
“Ironically, ‘Truth Hurts’ won Lizzo the Grammy Award for best pop solo performance. As alleged herein, the song was anything but Lizzo’s ‘solo performance’, and Lizzo would never have collected her Grammy Award but for the songwriting and producing contributions of counterclaimants,” said the claim.
The songwriters have asked the Californian court to dismiss Lizzo’s complaint with prejudice, and either find that they are joint authors of “Truth Hurts” or that the song is a derivative work of “Healthy”.
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