Ed’s smiling out loud after big legal victory
British musician Ed Sheeran said he was “very happy” he won’t have to “retire from my day job” after a US court ruled he did not plagiarise Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On when composing his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud.
The 32-year-old star added he was “unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this” even make it to court.
“I’m just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy. I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake,” he said outside court.
Sheeran revealed he missed his grandmother’s funeral in Ireland as he sat through the “bogus” and “dangerous” lawsuit that claimed he stole key elements for his hit song.
“These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before Let’s Get it On was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone,” Sheeran said.
“They are in a songwriter’s alphabet. Our toolkit. And they should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them, or the way they are played – in the same way nobody owns the colour blue.”
Sheeran stood up and hugged his legal team after the jury ruled that he “independently” created his song.
The lawsuit was filed by heirs of Gaye co-writer Ed Townsend, who alleged that harmonic progressions and rhythmic elements of Sheeran’s song were lifted without permission from the classic made famous by Gaye.
The heirs sought a share of the profits from Sheeran’s song. Sheeran, 32, played a number of songs from the witness stand as he gave evidence in the civil trial.
The English musician testified that he writes most of his songs in a day, and noted that he co-wrote Thinking Out Loud with songwriter Amy Wadge, a regular partner.
The two wrote Thinking Out Loud at Sheeran’s home in February 2014, he said.
“We sat guitar to guitar,” Sheeran said. “We wrote together quite a lot.”
The jurors were tasked with deciding if Sheeran’s song and Gaye’s classic are substantially similar and if their common elements are protected by copyright law.
Townsend’s family had pointed out that the group Boyz II Men has performed mash-ups of the two songs, and that Sheeran has blended the songs together on stage as well.
Sheeran’s team contested the allegations, saying “there are dozens if not hundreds of songs that predate and postdate” Gaye’s song, “utilising the same or similar chord progression.”
A musicologist retained by the defence says in court documents that the four-chord sequence was used in a number of songs before Gaye’s hit came out in 1973.
Industry members closely followed the copyright lawsuit as it could have set a precedent for protections on songwriters’ creations and opened the door to legal challenges elsewhere.
It was the second trial in a year for Sheeran, who successfully testified at a London court last April in a case centred around his song Shape Of You, saying that lawsuit was emblematic of copyright litigation going too far. The judge ruled in his favour.