Olivia Dean Song Accused of Plagiarizing Bill Withers’ “Just the Two of Us”

Olivia Dean performs 'Man I Need' at the 2026 BRIT Awards. Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images

A new lawsuit has alleged that Olivia Dean’s song “I’ve Seen It,” from her breakout album The Art Of Loving, stole from Bill Wither’s iconic track “Just The Two of Us.”

Mattie Music Group, the publisher of Wither’s music catalog, claims in court documents filed in California on Thursday that similarities between Dean’s 2025 song and Wither’s 1981 hit are “obvious and inescapable.”

“The number, character, and arrangement of the shared musical features are so striking that they support an interference that the similarities did not result from coincidence, independent creation, or reliance on common musical elements,” reads the complaint, per court documents obtained by The Hollywood Reporter.

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Mattie Music Group claims they first heard “I’ve Seen It” in August 2026 and listened to the song “several times” before hiring a musicologist, Alexander Stewart, Ph.D., to perform a “musicological analysis and comparison” of the two songs. It was determined that Dean’s song “copied in large and significant part” Wither’s “Just the Two of Us” and stole its “distinctively protectable melody,” the lawsuit reads.

The publisher alleges that it tried to contact the defendants — listed as Capitol Records, Universal Music Group, Sony Publishing and Kobalt Music Publishing America, Inc. — in August, but they “continued reproducing, distributing, licensing, publicly performing, and commercially exploiting” Dean’s song.

Dean and her co-writers, Bastian Langebaek and Max Wolfgang, are not named as defendants. The filing alleges that the trio “had a reasonable opportunity to encounter” Withers’ song prior to penning “I’ve Seen It.”

Written by Withers, Ralph MacDonald and William Salter, “Just the Two of Us” was a commercial success when it hit airwaves in the early ‘80s. The song reached No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and won a Grammy for best R&B song. Withers died at the age of 81 nearly 40 years later in March 2020.

Mattie Music Group is seeking damages to be decided at a trial.