According to nme.com, artist Rick Astley has allegedly settled a lawsuit with American rapper Yung Gravy over the alleged use of the song “Never Gonna Give You Up” in Gravy’s 2022 single “Betty (Get Money).”
Deadline has reported that the attorney for Gravy had allegedly filed court papers with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Elaine Mandel on September 22, which allegedly stated that the alleged case was resolved on the same day as the alleged filing of court papers.
Back in January Astley allegedly sued Gravy because his vocals were allegedly being imitated on “Betty (Get Money)” without approval. Also the alleged suit allegedly had terms of allegedly clearing the sample of “Never Gonna Give You Up” for the song, which allegedly the co-producers were allowed to allegedly replicate the instrumental of the song and allegedly interpolate its chorus melody for its own hook.
And the original songwriting team of Stock Aitken Waterman were allegedly given writers’s credits but they were not allegedly given clearance to directly sample the song itself.
Astley’s legal team alleged that Hauri brought in Nick Seeley to allegedly imitate Astley’s voice for Gravy’s tune. An alleged Instagram video was used as evidence, in which Gravy allegedly discussed how he allegedly wanted his vocals to allegedly “sound identical” to the original track.
“A license to use the original underlying musical composition does not authorise the stealing of the artist’s voice in the original recording,” the suit read. “Instead, they resorted to theft of Mr. Astley’s voice without a license and without agreement.”
“Betty (Get Money)” was released in June 2022 as the lead single from Gravy’s third studio album Marvelous. The album became the artist’s most popular single to date and saw him chart on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in his career. The song was also certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA.)
Astley has spent this year touring in support of his upcoming studio album Are We There Yet?, which includes two separate performances at Glastonbury: One of singer’s own material and one with the indie band Blossoms, where they covered the songs by The Smiths.