A year after being found not guilty of plagiarism for his mega hit Shape of you, Ed Sheeran once again came in person to court to defend one of his songs. On trial in New York, the artist denied on Tuesday that he plagiarized let’s get it onby the American Marvin Gaye, for his planetary hit thinking out loud.
The plaintiffs are the heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote the song with Marvin Gaye. Released in 1973, this classic has gone down in history for its guitar notes and the sensual vocals of the prince of soul and the Motown label.
A “mix” on stage that is debating
“Yes, (composer) Amy Wadge and I wrote the song thinking out loud “, assured in court the 32-year-old British singer and songwriter, questioned by the plaintiffs’ lawyers, according to the account of the New York Times present in the courtroom. Earlier, dressed in a black suit over a white shirt and a blue tie, the artist had arrived in Manhattan federal court, head bowed, without saying a word to the forest of cameras.
In their copyright infringement claim, Townsend’s heirs claim there are “striking resemblances” to thinking out loud, released in 2014. They want proof that the group Boyz 2 Men had mixed the two songs on stage. Ed Sheeran himself had chained in concert the very different voice lines of the two hits, on the same guitar harmonies, a sequence still visible on the Internet.
At the hearing, plaintiffs’ attorney Ben Crump relied on a fan video at a concert in 2014 showing Ed Sheeran “mixing” his title with that of Marvin Gaye. A “tangible proof” and even a “confession”, attacked the lawyer.
A Grammy for thinking out loud in 2016
Ed Sheeran for his part admitted that he “mixed one song with another” in concert and his lawyer Ilene Farkas claimed that his client had created thinking out loud independently and without copying Let’s get on it, despite the musical similarities between the two songs. According to the defense of the Briton, “there are dozens, even hundreds of songs before and after let’s get it on that use the same or similar chord progression”.
Ed Sheeran’s hit was ranked 2nd on the Billboard Hot 100, the American benchmark ranking, and won the Grammy Award for Best Song of the Year in 2016. The complaint, filed that same year, had first was dismissed on a procedural matter, then filed again in 2017, also against Sony.