Global chart-topper all mine, Sheeran tells copyright trial
British singer Ed Sheeran has denied that he simply altered other artists’ music and words to pass their work off as his own as he gave evidence in a copyright trial over his 2017 chart-topping hit
Shape Of You.
The award-winning singer is in a legal battle with grime artist Sami Chokri, who performs as Sami Switch, and music producer Ross O’Donoghue, who argue
Shape of You infringes “particular lines and phrases” from their 2015 song Oh Why.
Questioned by their lawyer Andrew Sutcliffe at the High Court in London, Sheeran, 31, said he had not been aware of Switch at the time he is accused of ripping off parts of Oh Why, and had never heard the song before the court case.
“I have already built a long and very successful career writing original songs for both myself and a wide range of other leading artists,” Sheeran said in his witness statement.
“I would not have been able to do that if I was in the habit of plagiarising other writers.”
Sutcliffe said Sheeran must have known of the grime artist, who he said had tweeted him directly and they had both appeared on SBTV, the British online music platform which helped launch Sheeran’s career.
Sutcliffe said Sheeran shouted out Switch’s name at Reading Festival in 2011 after being asked to by his best friend Jamal Edwards, the late founder of SBTV.
“This isn’t stuff that’s true,” Sheeran told the High Court in London on the second day of the trial which began on Friday.
Chokri and O’Donoghue say the “Oh I” hook in Shape Of You is “strikingly similar” to the Oh Why hook in their song and that it was “extremely likely” Sheeran had previously heard their track.
Sheeran and his co-writers have denied this.
Sutcliffe, who at the opening called Sheeran “a magpie”, questioned the chart-topper intensively over his songwriting style and whether it was spontaneous or the result of development over time, with the influence of other artists.
Sheeran described his songs as “excitement bottles” in his statement and said he wrote them in two hours and recently composed 25 songs in a week. Sheeran was also asked about his decision to settle a claim over his 2015 song Photograph which two musicians said had the same composition as their song Amazing.
Sheeran agreed to hand over 35 per cent of the publishing revenues, recognised the musicians as co-writers, and paid more than US$5 million to them.
Asked why he had done this rather than go to trial over what he described as a “nuisance”, Sheeran said: “I took the advice of my lawyers.”
Released from Sheeran’s third studio album “÷”, Shape of You
stormed charts around the world upon its release in January 2017, becoming the best performing song in the United States that year.