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.
Johnny McDaid takes to the stand in Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You song-theft battle
completemusicupdate.comSnow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid took to the stand in London’s high court yesterday in the ongoing song-theft legal battle over Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’, which he co-wrote.
He mainly echoed comments already made by his musical collaborator earlier in the week, while also talking about the “culture” of dubious copyright claims in the US courts that followed the 2015 ‘Blurred Lines’ ruling, and insisting that the thought of plagiarising another artist’s work was “abhorrent”.Sheeran and his songwriting collaborators – including McDaid – are accused of ripping off the earlier track ‘Oh Why’ by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue when they wrote their 2017 hit.
But Sheeran et al deny having ever heard of ‘Oh Why’ before writing ‘Shape Of You’, and counter that the elements shared by the two songs are pretty commonplace in pop music.In a written statement and during yesterday’s testimony in court, McDaid – like Sheeran – again insisted that the elements shared by ‘Shape Of You’ and ‘Oh Why’ are commonplace, and therefore it’s not unlikely that they would appear in two different pop songs.
Both use “sequential notes from the pentatonic scale”, he observed, but “it is a very common melodic structure, in my experience”.McDaid, like Sheeran, also took issue with the idea that past allegations of song-theft that have been made against the duo – as well as deals done with the writers of old songs that have heavily influenced their new songs – somehow suggest that he and Sheeran make a habit of nabbing musical and lyrical ideas from other artists’ work.“I have been a professional songwriter for many years and have achieved substantial success”, McDaid said in his written statement.
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