With his live performance in court, he wanted to show how quickly different tracks can resemble each other without having to have been stolen from one another.
Ed Sheeran has had to spend another day in court over allegations of plagiarism. There to prove that with his 2015 hit “Thinking Out Loud” not by Marvin Gayes “Let’s Get It On” he played a mash-up of tracks by Van Morrison, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers and Blackstreet on guitar. The thinking behind it: In his opinion, pop songs would often share chord progressions and other elements. These are not protected by copyright and he is therefore innocent.
His song mix showed how easily different songs can flow into each other and you could hear random similarities in the chord progressions. And with Sheeran’s piece “Thinking Out Loud”, the producers also told him at the beginning that the track was a “Van Morrison tune”, as the singer assured the US website “The Daily Beast”.
Since April 24, 2023, the Grammy winner has had to assert himself in a copyright lawsuit in New York because composer Ed Townsend’s heirs accuse the 32-year-old of using harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements from Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. which Townsend was also involved in copying for his song “Thinking Out Loud”. On the second day of the trial, the plaintiffs’ lawyers presented a video of Sheeran playing a mash-up of the two songs on stage as evidence.
The Brit vehemently defends himself against the allegations and has now declared in court that he writes most of his songs in one day and that he never once thought of “Let’s Get It On” while writing “Thinking Out Loud”. Most recently, the Halifax musician said he would be “done” with the music if found guilty at this trial.