Musical “magpie” Ed Sheeran is also a “music squirrel”, says lawyer in Shape Of You song-theft case

completemusicupdate.com:

Ed Sheeran further discussed his creative process in the high court in London yesterday as the song-theft legal battle over his 2017 hit ‘Shape Of You’ continued.

He also revealed how his team usually deal with songs he’s written that contain elements in common with old songs – a process that may or may not have been applied to the unreleased Sheeran track that got an unintended airing as yesterday’s court proceedings went through the motions.Sheeran and his songwriting collaborators 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.The legal rep for Chokri and O’Donoghue – Andrew Sutcliffe – previously called Sheeran a musical “magpie” who routinely nabs bits of existing songs to slot into his new music.

Although yesterday Sutcliffe declared that Sheeran was, in fact, a “music squirrel” who is constantly consuming music, squirrelling away the best bits to inform his own creative process.That followed up from Monday’s discussion of the process Sheeran goes through when writing new songs.