The French disco icon claims Cyrus’s new ballad echoes her decades-old classic — and she isn’t the only one who’s noticed.
PARIS — A voice from the disco era is making itself heard again, and this time the target is one of pop’s biggest current stars. Amanda Lear, the French singer, model, and one-time muse to Salvador Dalí, publicly accused Miley Cyrus on Monday of borrowing heavily from her 1978 track The Sphinx for Cyrus’s new single Redlights.
A Disco-Era Diva Speaks Out
Lear took to social media on Sunday to draw attention to the similarities between the two songs, framing her message with a mix of irony and pointed sarcasm rather than outright accusation. She thanked Cyrus for what she described as flattery, tagging the post with references to copying and imitation. The tone was playful on the surface, but the underlying message was clear: Lear believes her decades-old work has been echoed without credit.
Speaking to reporters afterward, Lear clarified that she was not threatening legal action, despite her label and publishers reportedly seeking formal acknowledgment of the resemblance. She emphasized that her original post was meant as commentary, not confrontation, and that she has never been inclined toward litigation over her music.
French disco diva Amanda Lear publicly accused American singer Miley Cyrus on Monday of plagiarising one of her songs from the 1970s.
Lear, a model-turned-singer who was a muse to surrealist painter Salvador Dali and a lover of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, took Cyrus to task over apparent similarities between her song “The Sphinx” and the American’s new track “Redlights”.
Cyrus released her tenth album “Bass Persuades” last Friday, a 10-track dance pop opus including the ballad “Redlights” which invites comparisons to the slower, gravelly voiced song by Lear from 1978.
“Thank you, Miley, for copying my song ‘The Sphinx’! I’m flattered!” Lear wrote on social media on Sunday with the hashtags “ripoff” and “copycat”.
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Cyrus’s New Chapter
The comparison stems from Cyrus’s tenth studio album, Bass Persuades, released last week. The ten-song collection leans into dance-pop territory, but Redlights stands out as a slower, moodier ballad — a departure that listeners quickly linked to Lear’s smoky-voiced original from nearly half a century earlier. The vocal tone, tempo, and overall atmosphere of the two tracks have drawn side-by-side comparisons online since the album’s debut.
Cyrus has built her recent career on genre experimentation, moving fluidly between glossy pop, rock-inflected ballads, and now, apparently, sounds reminiscent of European disco’s golden age. Whether the resemblance to The Sphinx was intentional homage or coincidence remains unaddressed by Cyrus or her team.
Lear’s Long Career in the Spotlight
Long before this controversy, Lear had already carved out a singular place in pop culture. A former model who became one of Dalí’s closest companions and was romantically linked to Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, she transitioned into music in the 1970s and has since released more than twenty albums. Her ties to that era run deep — the Rolling Stones themselves are widely believed to have written Miss Amanda Jones about her, a nod to her prominence during London’s Swinging Sixties.
That history gives weight to her current claim. Lear isn’t a fringe figure lobbing accusations at a younger star for attention; she’s a veteran artist with a well-documented catalog and industry standing, backed by a major label willing to press the issue further.
The Plagiarism Debate
Questions of plagiarism in pop music are notoriously difficult to resolve, often hinging on subjective interpretations of melody, phrasing, and production style rather than clear-cut copying. Musical resemblance cases have famously divided courts and critics alike in recent years, and this dispute may follow a similar path — driven more by public opinion and social media momentum than formal legal proceedings, at least for now.
For Lear, the goal appears less about damages and more about recognition: an acknowledgment that her decades-old work helped shape a sound now being celebrated as fresh. Whether Cyrus‘s camp responds — with a statement, a songwriting credit, or silence — will likely determine whether this becomes a footnote or a fuller reckoning over influence in modern pop.
Source: Rolling Stone
