Lady Gaga's Lawyer Responds to Claims That "Shallow" Was Stolen From a 2012 SoundCloud Song

Hot on the heels of her A Star Is Born success, Lady Gaga is being accused of stealing the film’s award-winning song, “Shallow,” from a lesser-known musician.

Entertainment Tonight reports that singer-songwriter Steve Ronsen has threatened a lawsuit against Gaga and musician Mark Ronson, claiming that the track features the same three-note progression found in his song “Almost,” which was released on SoundCloud in 2012.

“I admire Lady Gaga and I just want to get to the bottom of this,” he told ET. “There are other writers that wrote the ‘Shallow’ song, including Mark Ronson. I have secured a musicologist who also agrees that the songs are similar. I am simply going about this how anyone else would investigate any possible infringement.”

Lady Gaga and her team responded to the claims right away, countering Ronsen’s argument with accusations that he simply wants to capitalize on “Shallow”’s success.

“Mr. Ronsen and his lawyer are trying to make easy money off the back of a successful artist. It is shameful and wrong,” Gaga’s laywer, Orin Snyder, said in a statement, per Page Six. “I applaud Lady Gaga for having the courage and integrity to stand up on behalf of successful artists who find themselves on the receiving end of opportunistic claims such as this. Should [Ronsen’s lawyer] proceed with the case, Lady Gaga will fight it vigorously and will prevail.”

Snyder went on to explain that he hired his own team of musicologists to check for similarities between the songs, that they found nothing noteworthy, and that the three-note progression in question has been around for ages: “We provided [Ronsen’s lawyer] a lengthy letter with the findings of multiple leading musicologists, each of whom found no actionable similarities between the two songs,” he said. “Even [Ronsen’s] own musicologist acknowledged the generic three note progression is present in many other songs predating his client’s song.”

To no one’s surprise, Gaga’s Little Monsters are irate, and they’ve taken to Twitter to express their disappointment in Ronsen’s claims. “Sir you had under 300 plays on your SoundCloud before filing this lawsuit,” user @dontdoitdani fired back. “I promise you Lady Gaga did not find and copy your awful song.”

We’ll just have to wait and see how this case shakes out, but in the meantime, we have a feeling fans will still be belting along to “Shallow” every time it comes on Spotify. As Gaga herself once said: “HAAAA AAHHH AH AHHH AHHH HAAAAA AHHHHHH!”

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Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue