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Toninho Geraes has alleged in a lawsuit the British pop star plagiarised his track Mulheres in her Million Years Ago song
The British pop superstar Adele is not on tour in Brazil at the moment, but her absence was deeply regretted last week in Rio de Janeiro – not at a major festival like Rock in Rio or a mega-concert like Madonna’s at Copacabana Beach, but rather on a computer screen in a courtroom.
The 16-time Grammy award winner had been expected to participate via video call in a conciliation hearing for a case in which she – along with her frequent co-songwriter and producer Greg Kurstin, and the Brazilian subsidiaries of Sony and Universal Music – is accused of plagiarising a classic Brazilian samba.
On 13 December, a first-instance judge granted an injunction ordering Million Years Ago, by Adele and Kurstin, to be pulled worldwide – including from streaming services – in an unprecedented decision that made headlines in Latin America’s largest country.
But more than 10 days later, the song is still online and it is uncertain when or even if it will be taken down, as the decision could be overturned and there is no consensus on whether it is plagiarism.
At the defence’s request, the judge, Victor Agustin Jaccoud Diz Torres, scheduled a conciliation hearing for 19 December and provided a Microsoft Teams link for those unable to attend in person. “But Adele and Kurstin didn’t show up,” said lawyer Fredímio Biasotto Trotta.
He represents the claimant, Toninho Geraes, 62, a prolific samba composer who alleges that Adele’s 2015 song plagiarises his Mulheres (Women), recorded by the Brazilian singer Martinho da Vila on a hit album in 1995.
The hearing ended without an agreement. “They didn’t present any offer,” said Trotta, who is seeking lost royalties, £130,000 in moral damages, plus songwriting credit on Adele’s track.
The Brazilian law firm Veirano, which represents the defendants, declined to comment. Adele’s PR company did not respond to a request for comment.
The controversy began in 2020 when Geraes says he was alerted by a friend to the similarities between the two songs. “It’s blatant plagiarism,” said the composer, adding: “I had no intention of making this story public, partly to protect Adele. I don’t want a fight, but we tried to reach an out-of-court settlement, and they never even responded.”
To prove the alleged plagiarism, his lawyers hired a band to record a video playing both songs – whose rhythms are different: a ballad and a samba – in a studio at the same tempo and key. Sometimes, the songs overlay, creating a cacophony of simultaneous Portuguese and English sung by the same singer.
In his decision, the judge stated that the video reveals a “strong indication of almost complete melodic consonance” between the two songs.
In a court document seen by the Guardian, the defence has argued that the evidence was “manipulated” and that the video interpretation presents a “series of discrepancies” compared with the original Mulheres intended to “force” similarities with Adele’s song.
The case has turned into a dispute of expert reports: those hired by the Geraes’s lawyers demonstrating why it is plagiarism; and those by the defence, to show why it is not. Brazilian law is not crystal clear about what constitutes plagiarism, leaving it to the judges to interpret.
Daniel Campello, a music lawyer who is not involved in the case but has been working with copyright for years, said the unprecedented order to take the song offline marked an overreaction that could jeopardise the music industry.
“One thing is for two works to be similar; another is plagiarism … Imagine if this sets a precedent and dozens of songs start getting taken down just because they’re similar,” he said.
One of the defence’s main arguments is that the two tunes are similar because, “like dozens of others”, they use a chord progression that is a “musical cliche”.
Geraes’s lawyer called this argument “an aberration”. “If that were the case, there should be dozens of songs extremely similar to Mulheres and Million Years Ago, but there are not,” said Trotta.
In 2015, Turkish music fans claimed that Million Years Ago was similar to Acilara Tutunmak (Clinging to Pain), a 1985 song by the Kurdish singer Ahmet Kaya, who died in 2000. At the time, his widow, Gülten Kaya, told reporters she did not think an international star like Adele would plagiarise a song, adding: “If she consciously did it, then it would be theft.”
In his first decision, the Brazilian judge ordered streaming platforms such as Spotify and YouTube to “immediately remove” the song from their online catalogue, but later ruled that the responsibility would fall solely on the defendants, under penalty of a daily fine of £6,500 “per act of non-compliance”.
Although the song remains online and without the credits Geraes believes he deserves, the samba composer has treated the injunction as a victory for Brazilian musicians. “It shows that our works are not at the mercy of anyone who wants to come and mess with us. We are a serious country,” said the composer.
‘I don’t want a fight’: the Brazilian samba composer suing Adele for plagiarism
