Not Everyone Cares for Ellen's Taste in Music

Ellen DeGeneres Show sued over unlicensed use of 1,000 tunes, mainly during host's dance segments

Not everything can go Ellen DeGeneres' way all the time.

It turns out that several major record companies think the dance-happy host rocks out a little too much and are suing Telepictures Productions over the unlicensed use of more than 1,000 songs on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

You know how Ellen and in-house DJ Tony Okungbowa love their block-rockin' beats. Per the suit, reps for Ellen said they don't "roll that way" when the labels asked why they had not licensed the tunes, which included Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations."

But Telepictures doesn't appear to be sweatin' the copyright-infringement suit, telling reporters they have already been working with the plaintiffs—Arista Music, Atlantic Recording Corp., Capitol Records, Motown Record Company, Sony Music Entertainment, Virgin Records America and Warner Bros. Records—to resolve their issues on "amicable and reasonable terms."

"As sophisticated consumers of music, Defendants knew full well that, regardless of the way they rolled, under the Copyright Act, and under state law for the pre-1972 recordings, they needed a license to use the sound recordings lawfully," the suit states.

The complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Nashville, does not name DeGeneres as a defendant. (Though theoretically this means she's been dancing to the beat of somebody else's drum all this time.)