The hook of Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now" is a blatant lift of Alan Parsons Project's "Eye in the Sky," with about one bar ("...looking at yoooo-oooo-uuu-...") taken out. The tone of the rest of the song is the same, too.
Lady Antebellum's entire success, based on this one song- several grammies, now, not to mention commercial success (with "Need You Now" being the 19th most downloaded song of all time, accordng to Wikipedia)- seems to be based on the work Alan Parsons did creating "Eye in the Sky."
I do not believe that the similarities between the songs were necessarily purposeful. More likely it was a subconscious thing- Antebellum was playing around with melodies, and suddenly they hit on this one. "Wow, that really sounds good!" Well, yeah, because it's been played on the radio for over 25 years. It's probably more musical and intellectual laziness than a deliberate attempt to plagiarize.
However, I'm not sure that matters, though, especially in how it reflects on the U.S. recording industry. People DID catch this, a long time ago, as can be seen in internet postings, yet the song was allowed to become so successful. No real credit has been given to Alan Parsons. Lady Antebellum could have at least acknowledged him when accepting their awards.
There's a dishonesty to what happened with this song that distinguishes it from "U Can't Touch This" and "Ice, Ice Baby," for example. Those songs took their "inspired" tracks so blatantly from the original works that it's not like they could hide it.
But Lady Antebellum are trying to take full credit for the catchiness of a hook that the Alan Parsons Project wrote. And are having Grammies rained down on them. That bothers me.
There are a number of mashups between the two songs on Youtube , but the shortest and simplest is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS1z2inwJ2o