Ed Sheeran was almost certainly left cringing right to his very core yesterday after a fan shouted something to him whilst he was leaving court.
To be fair, it is one of his own lyrics, so he can’t complain that much.
All in all, it was a good day for the singer yesterday, as he managed to secure a positive judgement from the court.
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They ruled that his song ‘Thinking Out Loud’ did not violate the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’, after accusations from the estate of Gaye’s co-writer Ed Townsend.
The claims were initially made back in 2017, asserting that Sheeran’s 2014 hit bears ‘striking similarities’ and shares ‘overt common elements’ with ‘Let’s Get It On’.
The jury in New York decided yesterday that it didn’t, and that Sheeran hadn’t infringed the copyright.
Anyway, as he was leaving the court, one of Sheeran’s fans was just ‘thinking out loud’ as well, shouting one of his own lyrics at him.
The fan called out: “Ed Sheeran, I’m in love with the shape of you.”
Sheeran, looking more than a little bit uncomfortable already wearing a suit, just kept his head down and walked straight on by.
However, he must – somewhere deep within his soul – have swallowed back a massive cringe.
Fans certainly think so, anyway.
One posted the video with the caption: “I know Ed Sheeran cringed so hard hearing that.”
After the initial outburst, another person in the video pretty accurately summed up public feeling, telling the person: “I don’t think he wants to hear that right now.”
Others have been making their feelings on the fan’s outburst clear, as another tweet read: “What happened to having shame in this country?”
Still, the day was a good one for Sheeran, after he’d reportedly threatened that he may even quit the music industry if it was found that he’d plagiarised Gaye and Townsend’s work.
After the fact, he said that he was ‘very happy’ that he’d been vindicated and wouldn’t ‘have to retire from [his] day job after all’.
Outside the court, he said that he was ‘unbelievably frustrated baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all’.
"We've spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day, all over the world," he said.
"These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before Let's Get It On was written."
Sheeran had argued – in pretty compelling fashion, it must be said – that those chords and elements are there for all musicians to use and no-one owns them in the same way that ‘no-one owns the colour blue’.
Topics: Ed Sheeran, Music, Celebrity
Tom Wood