Donna Summer Estate Says Kanye West Used ‘I Feel Love’ Without Permission on ‘Vultures 1’ Track

February 11, 2024 E Jazz Reporter

Entertainment

“Copyright infringement!!!” said a statement posted on Saturday (Feb. 10) by Summer’s estate.

Donna Summer posed for a portrait in London on April 29, 1976.

Michael Putland/Getty Images

Kanye West‘s Vultures 1 uses an unauthorized interpolation of Donna Summer‘s 1977 hit “I Feel Love,” the late Summer’s estate claims.

The alleged copyright infringement is found on the pensive electro-pop track “Good (Don’t Die) on Ye’s new joint album with Ty Dolla $ign, which arrived Saturday morning.

On the Vultures track, the lyric “Oh, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive” is seemingly set to the melody of Summer’s “I Feel Love.”

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“Kanye West… asked permission to use Donna Summer’s song I Feel Love, he was denied… he changed the words, had someone re sing it or used AI but it’s I Feel Love… copyright infringement!!!” said a statement posted in an Instagram Story on the official Donna Summer account Saturday (Feb. 10).

“I Feel Love” peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977 and spent 23 weeks total on the chart. The song, which was produced and co-written with Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte for the late Queen of Disco’s fifth studio album, I Remember Yesterday, was one of 14 songs to reach the top 10 on the Hot 100 in Summer’s lifetime.

On Friday, former Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne also called out Kanye West on social media, saying that Ye had asked to sample a song but was “refused permission because he is an antisemite.” Osbourne said he used the sample anyway at a Vultures 1 listening event at Chicago’s United Center this week. “I want no association with this man!” the rocker wrote. Although Osbourne said online that West asked to sample “War Pigs,” the song he seems to have used at the event is “Iron Man.”

“We get so many requests for these songs,” Sharon Osbourne told Billboard on Friday, “and when we saw that request, we just said no way.” She added, “We’ve been in touch with his team … And it’s also an issue of having respect for another artist.”

On Saturday, she tweeted: “The Osbourne family have never wanted any association with Kanye West. He is an anti-Semitic fool who spews his rhetoric out into the world, Kanye you f—ed with the wrong dude this time. Sincerely, Sharon Osbourne.”

Vultures 1 marks the Ye’s first album since the release of his 2021 album, Donda, and his first project to be released since his string of hate speech and antisemitic remarks, which resulted in companies such as Adidas and Def Jam distancing themselves from the 46-year-old rapper.

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