Old Town Whoa! That may be the reaction Lil Nas X is having upon learning the news that he’s facing a massive $25 million lawsuit over claims that he doesn’t own the copyright to a song he released just five months before he took over the charts with his hit “Old Town Road.”
Lil Nas X is riding high with a hit single that is currently inching closer to breaking a years-long Billboard record courtesy of his song “Old Town Road”—and he also just racked up an impressive eight MTV VMA nominations. Apparently, his success has caused old issues to rise again…this time to the tune of $25 million.
As reported by @blast, Lil Nas X is being sued by The Music Force. The company claims it owns the rights to a song called “Carry On,” which was written by singer Bobby Caldwell and copyrighted by the company in 1983.
The company further claims that both Lil Nas X and his producer knowingly took parts of Caldwell’s song for their song of the same name. The Music Force also says that Lil Nas X and his producer were completely “motivated by greed and malicious intent” when they then proceeded to upload the song online to YouTube, Spotify and SoundCloud.
That’s not all though. The company also fired legal claims at Sony, stating that back in June the music giant acquired the rights to all of Lil Nas X’s songs, including “Carry On” and that Sony “knew or should have known … to make sure all elements of “Carry On” had been cleared for outside usage.”
The lawsuit also states:
“Sony elected to take no action to stop this illegal, unauthorized infringement as it was far more important to Sony to preserve its opportunity to enjoy millions of dollars of revenues from the success of the career of X.”
Whew, that’s a lot of money! At press time, Lil Nas X has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
Roommates, what are your thoughts on this?
