Edward Christopher Sheeran, MBE (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (pronounced "plus"), was released in September 2011. It topped the UK and Australian charts, reached number five in the US, and has since been certified eight-times platinum in the UK.
The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John.
Ed Sheeran lawyers want video of his mash-up performances excluded from Thinking Out Loud song theft trial
completemusicupdate.comNo high profile song-theft legal battle is complete without a YouTube video mashing together the two songs that are part of the dispute.
But should that mash-up be shown in court? And what if the alleged song thief made the mash-up? Ed Sheeran’s legal team would like it to be known that mash-ups of this kind have no place in a courtroom, especially if they were made by Ed Sheeran.So, yes, while last year’s big song theft legal battle involving Sheeran was in the UK courts, this year we’re back in the American system with the long running litigation over his song ‘Thinking Out Loud’.
On that track, Sheeran is accused of ripping off Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ by the family of the earlier song’s co-writer Ed Townsend.With the UK dispute – where Sheeran was accused of borrowing a key element of ‘Shape Of You’ from earlier Sami Chokri track ‘Oh Why’ – a central component of the case was whether or not Sheeran and his songwriting collaborators had even been aware of Chokri’s record before writing their song.The Chokri side ultimately failed to demonstrate that they had, with Sheeran et al claiming that they hadn’t actually heard ‘Oh Why’ until after the song theft lawsuit was filed.With the US litigation, however, it can probably be taken as read that Sheeran was aware of ‘Let’s Get It On’ before writing ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and prior to any legal filing.
Not least because there’s a YouTube video of him playing his song at a concert in 2014 and inserting a bit of Gaye’s song into the middle of the performance.Perhaps unsurprisingly, lawyers working for Townsend want to show that YouTube video to the jury when this particular song theft legal battle finally gets to trial later this year.
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