On Saturday If music be the food of love, then play on

TEd Sheeran denied that he ‘borrows’ ideas from songwriters without acknowledgement

HEY say imitation is the greatest form of flattery and the hundreds of cover bands who make a living by performing other people’s songs will no doubt agree.

But what about the original artist? Do they really enjoy hearing their words and music performed by lesser mortals? Professional tribute bands are one thing but the stardom wannerbies on The Voice and X-Factor might not be so pleasing to the ear. And then there’s the plethora of pub bands who have the ability to kill the most beautiful song in just a few second of backing-track and feedback.

But how does it work in reverse? If you are a singer-songwriter hoping to make the big time and believe someone has stolen your lyrics or tune? In the case of Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue you don’t let it ride. You accuse superstar Ed Sheeran of turning your work into one of his biggest hits and trigger a copyright battle that goes all the way to the High Court.

That battle ended this week but with victory for Sheeran who said he and his Shape Of You co-writers

“stood up for what we thought was right”. The singer, Snow Patrol’s John McDaid and producer Steven McCutcheon faced accusations that they ripped off Chokri and O’Donoghue’s 2015 track Oh Why in the making of 2017’s biggest selling single Shape Of You.

Chokri told the High Court he felt “robbed” by Sheeran and was “shocked” when he first heard Shape Of You on the radio.

Chokri – a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch – and O’Donoghue alleged an “Oh I” hook in Shape Of You is “strikingly similar” to an “Oh why” refrain in their own track.

But a judge concluded Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from Oh Why when writing his hit.

All three Shape Of You co-authors denied allegations of copying and said they did not remember hearing Oh Why before the legal fight.

But Sheeran denied he “borrows” ideas from unknown songwriters without acknowledgement and insisted he “always tried to be completely fair” in crediting people who contributed to his albums.

In an interview on Newsnight yesterday, Sheeran said songwriting had changed in the modern world and he was forced to film himself composing. He said: “There’s the George Harrison point, where he said he’s scared to touch the piano because he might be touching someone else’s note. There is definitely a feeling of that in the studio. I personally think the best feeling in the world is the euphoria around the first idea of writing a great song.

“That feeling has now turned into ‘Oh wait, let’s stand back for a minute’. You find yourself in the moment, second-guessing yourself.”

Of course this isn’t the first legal battle over plagiarism and there are some high-profile cases with which we can tunefully compare it.

The question on Brazilian artist Jorge Ben Jor’s lips in 1978 was not whether Rod Stewart was sexy but whether his hit song was a rip-off. Jor claimed the saucy song stole bits of his own track Taj Mahal. Despite settling out of court, Stewart later claimed “unconscious plagiarism”.

Sheeran’s quote about George Harrison was referencing the former Beatle’s battle over My Sweet Lord which he was accused of stealing from The Chiffons’ 1963 hit He’s So Fine. The eventual verdict was “subconscious plagiarising”, but Harrison still had to pay $1.6m in damages.

And then there was Vanilla Ice, who blantly sampled Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure without asking for their permission and for which he settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Many younger people will tell you they only discovered Queen and Bowie because of Vanilla Ice’s cheeky homage to their genius. The same can be said for the many classical arrangements in many pop songs.

To directly quote William Shakespeare: “If music be the food of love, play on.”

Ed Sheeran performing on stage in London