The Weeknd is being sued for a sample in ‘The Hills’

The Weeknd is being sued for copyright infringement, over an illicit sample use in ‘The Hills’.

The sample is taken from an original score in ‘The Machine’, written by Tom Raybould.

Astonishingly, Raybould only found out about the sample use when The Weeknd’s producer, Emmanuel “Mano” Nickerson, sent him a Twitter direct message, saying: “I sampled your music might make it 2 the weeknd next album. Huge fan of what u did 4 the machine movie!” Amazing.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the complaint concerns: “Both the Infringing Song and the Track featuring synthesizer bass-lines performed with almost identical idiosyncratic sounds at the same register and using the same pitch sequence, melodic phase structure and rhythmic durations.”

The Weeknd has yet to provide comment, but this wouldn’t be the first time he’s run into such issues. Portishead’s Geoff Barrow accused Abel Tesfaye of nabbing their ‘Machine Gun’ track for his own ‘Belong to the World’. Maybe The Weeknd should just stay away from machines in general.