Sheeran vindicated: A star’s court victory
“Ed Sheeran’s recent victory in court should elicit a sigh of relief from all music lovers,” said Callie Ahlgrim in Insider. The British pop star had been sued for copyright infringement because of similarities between his Grammy-winning 2014 ballad, “Thinking Out Loud,” and Marvin Gaye’s 1973 No. 1 song “Let’s Get It On.” But a New York City jury didn’t accept that Sheeran had copied a repeating four-chord progression, played in a particular rhythm and tempo, that appears throughout Gaye’s song. And thank goodness, because by that logic, “any number of brilliant songwriters” could be sued for using common chord combinations. During his testimony, Sheeran had threatened to quit making music if he lost, which might have pleased the many haters he attracts. But whatever you think of the mop-haired 31-yearold hitmaker, there’s “a huge difference” between echoing elements of a past tune and stealing them.
“In some ways, this latest trial was a tiebreaker between other notable copyright trials over the past decade,” said Ethan Millman in Rolling Stone. It was chilling to songwriters in 2015 when Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams were found liable for copying the feel of Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” in creating “Blurred Lines,” a hit that shared none of the earlier song’s chords or melodies. The pair was ordered to pay Gaye’s family more than $5 million. But since then, Led Zeppelin and Katy Perry have successfully fought off claims filed against “Stairway to Heaven” and “Dark Horse,” reopening a bit of space for overlap between new and old songs. Every jury is different, though, so the boundaries can always change. Sheeran, for his part, argued from the witness stand that the vocabulary of pop music is too limited to prohibit repetition of any kind—and said “Thinking Out Loud” was inspired not by Gaye but by Van Morrison.