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Eminem sues Audi for plagiarizing song for ad

American rapper Eminem is suing German carmaker Audi for allegedly copying his song “Lose Yourself” for a commercial without permission, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported on Wednesday.

Published: 8 June 2011 16:39 CEST

Eminem sues Audi for plagiarizing song for ad

Photo: DPA

At issue is a trailer for the A6 Avant, which ended up on Youtube and appears to show the car driving past Berlin landmarks to the riff from Eminem’s song.

That would be bad enough, but the spot also appears to be a blatant rip-off of a commercial for the US carmaker Chrysler, which was shown during the Super Bowl earlier this year.

That commercial also features Eminem’s music – this time used with his permission – as a car glides through Detroit city streets.

Audi told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that it was looking into the situation, but pointed out that the commercial was shown “only once” at a press event.

Joel Martin a spokesman for Eight Mile Style, which handles copyright issues for the rapper, told Reuters: “We believe Audi not only used ‘Lose Yourself’ to sell their product without permission, but their spot actually feels inspired by elements of Chrysler’s commercial campaign.”

The lawsuit comes at a bad time for Audi’s parent company Volkswagen, which is making a concerted effort to boost its share of the US auto market.

Watch Audi’s ad below

And compare it to the Chryler spot

The Local/mdm

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New songs mark sixth anniversary of French star Johnny Hallyday's death

Hallyday, blessed with a powerful husky voice and seemingly boundless energy, died in December 2017, aged 74, of lung cancer after a long music and acting career.

After an estimated 110 million records sold during his lifetime – making him one of the world’s best-selling singers -Hallyday’s success has continued unabated beyond his death.

Almost half of his current listeners on Spotify are under the age of 35, according to the streaming service, and a posthumous greatest hits collection of “France’s favourite rock’n’roller”, whose real name was Jean-Philippe Leo
Smet, sold more than half a million copies.

The two new songs, Un cri (A cry) and Grave-moi le coeur (Engrave my heart), are featured on two albums published by different labels which also contain already-known hits in remastered or symphonic versions.

Un cri was written in 2017 by guitarist and producer Maxim Nucci – better known as Yodelice – who worked with Hallyday during the singer’s final years.

At the time Hallyday had just learned that his cancer had returned, and he “felt the need to make music outside the framework of an album,” Yodelice told reporters this week.

Hallyday recorded a demo version of the song, accompanied only by an acoustic blues guitar, but never brought it to full production.

Sensing the fans’ unbroken love for Hallyday, Yodelice decided to finish the job.

He separated the voice track from the guitar which he felt was too tame, and arranged a rockier, full-band accompaniment.

“It felt like I was playing with my buddy,” he said.

The second song, Grave-moi le coeur, is to be published in December under the artistic responsibility of another of the singer’s close collaborators, the arranger Yvan Cassar.

Hallyday recorded the song – a French version of Elvis’s Love Me Tender – with a view to performing it at a 1996 show in Las Vegas.

But in the end he did not play it live, opting instead for the original English-language version, and did not include it in any album.

“This may sound crazy, but the song was on a rehearsal tape that had never been digitalised,” Cassar told AFP.

The new songs are unlikely to be the last of new Hallyday tunes to delight fans, a source with knowledge of his work said. “There’s still a huge mass of recordings out there spanning his whole career,” the source said.

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