This is the second trial in a year for the British singer, who last April won a trial in another plagiarism case for his mega hit Shape of you.
On trial in New York, the current king of English pop Ed Sheeran defended himself on Tuesday for having plagiarized the famous song by American Marvin Gaye, Let’s get it onfor its planetary tube Thinking out loudan emblematic case of musical creation and copyright.
It’s the second trial in a year for the 32-year-old British singer and songwriter, who won a separate court battle in London’s High Court last April that dismissed two musicians accusing him of copying one of their works, for his mega hit Shape of you.
This time the plaintiffs are the heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote Let’s get it on with Marvin Gaye. Released in 1973, this soul classic has gone down in history for its guitar notes and sensual vocals from the prince of soul and the Motown label.
“Striking Similarities”
“Yes, (composer) Amy Wadge and I wrote the song Thinking out loud“, assured before the court Ed Sheeran, questioned by the lawyers of the plaintiffs, 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.
He was followed by Townsend’s daughter, Kathryn Townsend Griffin, who told the press that she was “here for justice, to protect (her) father’s intellectual property”. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Ben Crump, launched by taking up the title of the tube Let’s get it on: “As Marvin Gaye would have said, let’s go!”.
In their copyright infringement claim, Townsend’s heirs claim there are “striking similarities” 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 lines of voices, very different, of the two tubes, on the same guitar harmonies, a sequence still visible on the internet.
“Confession”
At the hearing, according to NOW, Me Crump relied on a fan video at a 2014 concert showing Ed Sheeran “mixing” his track to that of Marvin Gaye. A “tangible proof” and even a “confession”, attacked the lawyer.
Ed Sheeran admitted he ‘mixed one song with another’ in concert and his lawyer Ilene Farkas claimed his client created Thinking out loud independently and without copying Let’s get on itdespite the musical similarities between the two songs.
According to the Briton’s defence, “there are dozens, if not hundreds of songs before and after Let’s get it on which use the same chord progression or a similar progression”. 2016.
“Obvious Similarities”
The complaint, filed in 2016, was first dismissed on a procedural issue, then filed again in 2017, also against Sony. As in New York, Ed Sheeran had moved in person to defend his song Shape of you in the previous trial in London, a case he considered emblematic of abusive practices that undermine creation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxZjVZKVN7k
The London judge had agreed with Ed Sheeran, considering that he had not copied, even “unconsciously”, part of the melody of the song Oh why (2015) by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue. The judge had noted “obvious similarities” between the two songs, with a melody resulting in particular from the minor pentatonic scale like “countless songs from pop, rock, folk and blues”, but also “significant differences”.
The African-American Marvin Gaye is considered one of the great artists of soul and popular music of the last century. Born in 1939 in Washington, he died in 1984 in Los Angeles, killed by his father after an argument on the eve of his 45th birthday.
