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Dionne Warwick's had a long career, but she's not done yet. The legendary singer is prepping her final album, DWuets, which features duets with Cynthia Erivo, Kehlani, and more. The Erivo collab "Ocean In The Desert" will serve as the lead single, slated for release on March 20, per Billboard. Warwick recruited Diane Warren to write all of the songs.
Meanwhile Warwick filed a lawsuit on Monday (March 9) accusing Artists Rights Enforcement Corp. of stealing "millions of dollars in royalty income" from hits like "Walk On By" and "I Say A Little Prayer." The rights management company first sued her last year, alleging she'd unfairly reneged on a longtime partnership. Warwick's lawyer claim the firm exploited a one-page agreement hastily signed in 2001 to quietly take millions of dollars from her for more than 20 years until she realized.
"Ms. Warwick seeks to expose AREC’s performative ethics and vindicate her rights and obtain restitution for the damages caused by AREC’s decades-long pilfering of millions of dollars in royalty income she earned as a result her legendary recordings," her lawyer Robert S. Meloni writes in the court filing, obtained by Billboard. The group has allegedly wrongfully taken royalties from "Walk On By," "I Say A Little Prayer," "I’ll Never Fall In Love Again," "That’s What Friends Are For," "Do You Know The Way To San Jose," "Alfie," and more.
The suit also alleges that AREC sabotaged a potential deal Warwick was negotiating with Primary Wave to sell the company revenue streams from her sound recordings by contacting Primary Wave to say that Warwick could not do so.
In 2001, both Warwick and AREC signed an agreement after she retained the group to chase down unpaid royalties allegedly owed to her by then-called Warner Bros. Records. AREC claims that deal gives it the right to enforce her rights "in perpetuity." Warwick had signed without a lawyer, and her attorney says Warwick thought it applied only to the specific dispute with Warner Bros: "Instead, for 23 years AREC took a 50% share of anything and everything that flowed as a result of her creative output from 1962 to 2001."
Warwick’s lawyers say AREC has "collected and deposited into its own bank account all of Ms. Warwick’s royalty income" over that period. The group also allegedly "never prepared or rendered any accounting statements" for such payments. Warwick says she didn't notice until September, when she retained well-known music attorney Douglas J. Davis.
And in other Warwick news, she suffered a diss from her recent Celebrity Apprentice costar Lisa Rinna in her new memoir You Better Believe I'm Gonna Talk About It, which came out a couple weeks ago. The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills alum called Warwick a "nasty piece of work" and recounted: "The first time I met her on a create-your-own pizza task, she barely looked at me but had the audacity to bark, 'Go get me a Pepsi!'"
"And for some reason, I ran off like a simp to get Dionne Warwick a Pepsi," she added. "She thanked me by conspiring with her coven to get me canned."
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