{"id":7159,"date":"2025-07-31T06:07:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T06:07:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/singers-company-sued-over-sample\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T06:07:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T06:07:05","slug":"singers-company-sued-over-sample","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/singers-company-sued-over-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Singer’s Company Sued Over Sample"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tBeyonc\u00e9\u2019s company Parkwood Entertainment is facing a lawsuit over a sample used as the introduction to her hit 2022 Renaissance<\/em> track \u201cAlien Superstar,\u201d with an indie label saying the house musician who licensed his 1998 song \u201cMoonraker\u201d doesn\u2019t actually own the rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe allegations came in a Tuesday (July 29) legal complaint against Parkwood, Sony, Warner Chappell and dance musician John Holiday, who goes by the stage names Foremost Poets and Johnny Dangerous. Beyonc\u00e9 herself is not named as a defendant.<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe federal lawsuit centers on the introduction to \u201cAlien Superstar,\u201d which peaked at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022: \u201cPlease do not be alarmed, remain calm\/ Do not attempt to leave the dancefloor\/ The DJ booth is conducting a troubleshoot of the entire system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThis intro is a sample from Holiday\u2019s house song \u201cMoonraker,\u201d and Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s lengthy Renaissance <\/em>credits name Holiday as a co-writer. Tuesday\u2019s lawsuit says Beyonc\u00e9 licensed the sample from Holiday himself \u2014 but adds that he doesn\u2019t own the track.<\/p>\n

\n\tAccording to Shuji Hirose<\/strong>, the founder and owner of indie house music label Soundmen on Wax Records, he bought all the copyrights to \u201cMoonraker\u201d for a flat fee of $1,500 when his company released the song in 1998.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDespite widespread domestic and international distribution and publication of the sound recording \u2018Moonraker\u2019 by Soundmen on Wax Ltd. since 1998, defendants Parkwood, Sony Music Entertainment and Sony Music Publishing opted to contract with defendant Holiday for a master use license of the sound recording \u2018Moonraker\u2019 to create the infringing derivative work, \u2018Alien Superstar,\u2019\u201d writes Hirose\u2019s attorney DaShawn Hayes<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Beyonc\u00e9<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tHirose says that if anybody has the right to license \u201cMoonraker, it\u2019s him. Because Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s team did not clear the sample with Hirose, the label owner is now bringing claims for copyright infringement and seeking a portion of the royalties and sale profits from \u201cAlien Superstar.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit also accuses Holiday of breach of contract, claiming he violated the terms of their 1998 distribution deal by licensing \u201cMoonraker\u201d to Beyonc\u00e9 when he didn\u2019t actually own the rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for Parkwood, Sony and Warner Chappell did not immediately return requests for comment on Wednesday (July 30).<\/p>\n

\n\tBeyonc\u00e9\u2019s extensive samples and interpolations on Renaissance<\/em> were a focal point of discussion when the dance album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in August 2022. Some artists celebrated their references on the record, like \u201cShow Me Love\u201d singer Robin S, while others, such as \u201cMilkshake\u201d hitmaker Kelis, were less pleased.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast year, a little-known New Orleans group sued Beyonc\u00e9 over the chart-topping Renaissance<\/em> hit \u201cBreak My Soul.\u201d That suit, which was quickly dropped, claimed the properly-cleared Big Freedia sample on \u201cBreak My Soul\u201d copied lyrics from their own 2002 track \u201cRelease a Wiggle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s company Parkwood Entertainment is facing a lawsuit over a sample used as the introduction to her hit 2022 Renaissance track \u201cAlien Superstar,\u201d with an indie label saying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[413,1307,6569,412],"class_list":["post-7159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-company","tag-sample","tag-singers","tag-sued"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}