Did Shakira Plagiarize?

People can typically accuse Shakira of getting catchy Spanish lyrics stuck in their heads, but the singer was recently accused along with fellow Colombian artist Carlos Vives of plagiarizing lyrics from a song more than two decades old and using them in her Grammy award winning song, La Bicicleta.

Here are the facts:

Livan Rafael Castellanos wrote a song Yo te quiero tanto in 1997 that include the lyrics that translate to “I love you, I love you so much” which is similar to Shakira’s lyrics “I dream of you and love you so much”.

Now, most love songs, regardless of the language only have so many ways to say “I love you”. Is it possible that Shakira and Vives drew inspiration from Castellanos and even other singers? Yes, this is also possible.

In 2012, Shakira was accused of copyright infringement for stealing from a song made in 1998 which Sony (her record label) was able to find that the artist claiming his song was original, was not in fact created when he said it was, and the case was then overturned.

We will follow this case to see how it plays out as claiming plagiarism due to one line seems like a hard win.

We’re not sure how the courts will rule, but we do know that Shakira’s songs may be catchy just hopefully not enough to be caught for plagiarizing.

Check out Shakira’s song that is being used as evidence of plagiarism here and Livam, the original song.