The Ed Sheeran ‘Shape of You’ verdict reveals the realities of pop songwriting in the streaming era

msn.com:

had won the high-profile copyright case brought against him by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, over similarities between Sheeran’s 2017 hit “Shape Of You”, and Chokri’s 2015 release “Oh Why”.

Ed Sheeran in a video statement posted to Instagram after the ‘Shape of You’ verdict was deliveredSteady on. A key pillar of Sheeran’s defence was that the passage in question – four ascending pre-hook “oh I”s – was such a common and formulaic echo of the pentatonic scale, so overused and obvious, that it was all but unattributable.

Sheeran even sang sections of “Feeling Good” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” in court as evidence of how predictable he’d been while writing “Shape Of You”.

There’s no triumph for the art of imaginative musicianship in Justice Zacaroli’s decision that Sheeran had “neither deliberately or subconsciously” ripped off Chokri’s song, or even heard it at all.