Guitarist-producer Matthew Spatola sued for writing credit on the chart-topping song

Jason Derulo scored a legal victory Thursday when a jury found the pop star owed no songwriting credit or royalties to Matthew Spatola, the musician who played guitar and bass on Derulo’s chart-topping hit “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat).”

Seven jurors unanimously found that Spatola was not a joint author of either the song’s written composition or a sound recording that Spatola made with Derulo on April 23, 2020. Derulo smiled and hung his head in relief as his lawyer, Joshua M. Rosenberg, patted him on the back.

“I just want to thank the jury for their time. I believe they came to the right decision,” Derulo told Rolling Stone as the panel members made a beeline for the elevators, declining to comment. “I just want to get back to the art. That is my passion. This took a lot of time from my life. I want to get back to creating.”

The verdict capped an 11-day trial where Derulo and Spatola offered sharply different accounts of how the song was created. A guitarist who’s performed with major acts including the Weeknd, Kehlani, T.I., Jessie J, and Ye, Spatola testified that he was invited to Derulo’s home studio in April 2020 to “create” music for “Savage Love.” He testified that he was not given sheet music and instead came up with original guitar and bass parts that “didn’t exist there otherwise.”

Spatola, who went on to become a credited producer on DJ Khaled’s Grammy-nominated song “God Did,” said he wrote detailed chords for “Savage Love” based on his training and “musical knowledge.” He flatly rejected Derulo’s claim that the singer simply vocalized the parts for him to play.

Derulo, meanwhile, told jurors he only hired Spatola as a session musician to play guitar and bass versions of the already viral composition, “Laxed – Siren Beat,” by New Zealand artist Jawsh 685, which had surged across social media and fueled an international dance craze early in the pandemic. Jurors were shown a deposition video in which Derulo demonstrated his version of the studio session, singing the guitar and bass parts the way he claimed he did for Spatola.

“Mr. Spatola created absolutely nothing on ‘Savage Love,’” Derulo told the jury. He vehemently denied calling Spatola directly in April 2020, inviting him to be a creative producer on the song. He said they had never met before.

“If I don’t know the producer and have never heard their beats, why would I ask them to come and produce a song with me? It makes zero sense. I wouldn’t ask somebody to come and create with me when I have no prior knowledge of what they’ve created,” he said on the stand.

Derulo said it was true that Spatola “played a beautiful guitar, and bass,” but he testified Spatola’s only job on “Savage Love” was to do exactly what Derulo told him. He said Jawsh’s composition already had “captivated the world,” and he wasn’t looking for an overhaul.

“I wanted it to feel like a real piece of music without knocking what Jawsh did,” Derulo said. “I couldn’t sing right on top of Jawsh’s work because there was a saxophone playing the melody I planned to sing. I needed to create a new bed that felt a little more elevated, a little more expensive.”

In his closing argument Wednesday, Spatola’s lawyer, Christopher Frost, told jurors that Spatola’s guitar work appears throughout “Savage Love” and helped give the hit its “organic feel.” Frost also argued that Spatola independently created the song’s pre-chorus section, which an expert retained by the plaintiffs described as a “significant contribution” to the track.

“Spatola’s parts played alone could constitute a full composition,” Frost argued. “Drums couldn’t do that. None of the other pieces that anybody else provided could do that on their own. Only those guitar parts.” He added: “He created a full composition, and under the law, a full composition is independently copyrightable.”

In his lawsuit, Spatola sought a declaration that he is a co-author of “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” and entitled to songwriting credit and royalties. The judge split the case into two phases, ruling that any damages would be determined only after the jury decided the authorship dispute.