The plaintiffs will have been entitled to a few guitar chords, but nothing else. Ed Sheeran, who appeared in Manhattan federal court with an instrument in hand to support his defense, won his case. The British king of pop was attacked for a song he allegedly copied in part from Marvin Gaye.
The jury finally found that the 32-year-old singer had created his song “independently” and that his planetary hit from 2014, “Thinking Out Loud” was therefore not a partial copy of the famous “Let’s Get It On” from the soul prince Marvin Gaye in 1973. The plaintiffs in this iconic music copyright case were the heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote the track with Marvin Gaye. They pointed to “striking similarities and obvious common elements” between the two songs.
Risk of contagion
During this trial, Ed Sheeran, who had been attending the hearings in New York since April 24, even played guitar and sang in the courtroom as a pledge of good faith in front of a musicologist cited by the defense who believed that the progression of chords on the two songs was almost identical.
The pop musician therefore played in court the four key chords of “Thinking Out Loud”, ensuring that they were very different from those in “Let’s Get It On”.
The British artist also said he wrote his hit in 2014 with his musical partner Amy Wadge while “getting out of the shower” at home. The song peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for Best Song in 2016.
The risk of this trial, feared experts, was the multiplication of disputes over copyright and a form of “paranoia” that would develop among musicians terrified of copying each other.
It was also the second trial in a year for the 32-year-old British singer and songwriter, who had already won a separate legal battle in April 2022 before the High Court in London, which had dismissed two musicians accusing him for having copied one of their works for his mega hit “Shape Of You”. After this new victory, Ed Sheeran said he was “happy” with his victory against a “baseless” complaint. “Happier” in a way.