Ed Sheeran says he “had to take a stand” against song-theft accusation

completemusicupdate.com:

Ed Sheeran has said that he felt that he “had to take a stand” against claims that he ripped off Marvin Gaye song ‘Let’s Get It On’ when he wrote his 2014 song ‘Thinking Out Loud’, even though doing so meant that he was forced to miss his grandmother’s funeral.“I’m really glad it’s over, man”, he told Howard Stern on his Sirius XM show.

Acknowledging the length of time it took for the case to get to trial, he went on: “It was eight years of that. This is my livelihood and the thing I’ve worked my entire life to do, and to have someone disbelieve it and to diminish it, I really felt like I had to take a stand”.Highlighting his defence in the case against the estate of ‘Let’s Get It On’ co-writer Ed Townsend, he played a portion of a medley he also performed during the recent trial in the New York courts, running through other songs that used the same chord sequence that he was accused of stealing in the court case, including Rod Stewart’s ‘Have I Told You Lately That I Love You’ and The Temptations’ ‘My Girl’.“There were 101 songs [we found with that chord progression] and that was scratching the surface”, he explained. “Yes, it’s a chord sequence that you hear on successful songs, but if you say that a song in 1973 owns this, then what about all the songs that came before?

We found songs from like the 1700s that had similar melodic stuff. And then there were huge songs in the 50s and huge songs in the 60s”.“No one’s saying that songs shouldn’t be copyrighted”, he added. “But you just can’t copyright a chord sequence”.In many cases such as this, artists often choose to settle out of court – as indeed Sheeran has himself in the past.