Nancy Dillon
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Jason Derulo at the 'Michael' premiere held on April 20, 2026 in Los Angeles. Earl Gibson III/Deadline/Getty Images Jason Derulo scored a legal victory Thursday when a jury found the pop star owed no songwriting credit or royalties to Matthew Spatola, the musician who played guitar and bass on Derulo’s chart-topping hit “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat).”
Seven jurors unanimously found that Spatola was not a joint author of either the song’s written composition or a sound recording that Spatola made with Derulo on April 23, 2021. Derulo smiled and hung his head in relief as his lawyer, Joshua M. Rosenberg, patted him on the back as the judge thanked the jurors.
The verdict capped an 11-day trial where Derulo and Spatola offered sharply different accounts of how the song was created. A guitarist who’s performed with major acts including the Weeknd, Kehlani, T.I., Jessie J, and Ye, Spatola testified that he was invited to Derulo’s home studio in April 2020 to “create” music for “Savage Love.” He testified that he was not given sheet music and instead came up with original guitar and bass parts that “didn’t exist there otherwise.”
Spatola, who went on to become a credited producer on DJ Khaled’s Grammy-nominated song “God Did,” said he wrote detailed chords for “Savage Love” based on his training and “musical knowledge.” He flatly rejected Derulo’s claim that the singer simply vocalized the parts for him to play.
Derulo, meanwhile, told jurors he only hired Spatola as a session musician to play guitar and bass versions of the already viral composition, “Laxed – Siren Beat,” by New Zealand artist Jawsh 685, which had surged across social media and fueled an international dance craze early in the pandemic. Jurors were shown a deposition video in which Derulo demonstrated his version of the studio session, singing the guitar and bass parts the way he claimed he did for Spatola.
“Mr. Spatola created absolutely nothing on ‘Savage Love,’” Derulo told the jury. He vehemently denied calling Spatola directly in April 2020, inviting him to be a creative producer on the song. He said they had never met before.
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“If I don’t know the producer and have never heard their beats, why would I ask them to come and produce a song with me? It makes zero sense. I wouldn’t ask somebody to come and create with me when I have no prior knowledge of what they’ve created,” he said on the stand.
Derulo said it was true that Spatola “played a beautiful guitar, and bass,” but he testified Spatola’s only job on “Savage Love” was to do exactly what Derulo told him. He said Jawsh’s composition already had “captivated the world,” and he wasn’t looking for an overhaul.
“I wanted it to feel like a real piece of music without knocking what Jawsh did,” Derulo said. “I couldn’t sing right on top of Jawsh’s work because there was a saxophone playing the melody I planned to sing. I needed to create a new bed that felt a little more elevated, a little more expensive.”
In his closing argument Wednesday, Spatola’s lawyer, Christopher Frost, told jurors that Spatola’s guitar work appears throughout “Savage Love” and helped give the hit its “organic feel.” Frost also argued that Spatola independently created the song’s pre-chorus section, which an expert retained by the plaintiffs described as a “significant contribution” to the track.
