A federal jury found Thursday that pop singer Ed Sheeran did not copy Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On” in his 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud.”
For two weeks in a courtroom in downtown Manhattan, Sheeran, one of music’s biggest global hitmakers, often guitar in hand, joined his friend and longtime collaborator Amy Wadge in ” Thinking Out Loud” was created independently. The song, he said, was inspired by the decades of love he and Ms. Wadge observed between their family elders.
The two tracks resemble a syncopated chord pattern that the family of litigious gay co-writer Ed Townsend called the “heart” of “Let’s Get It On.” Sheeran and his lawyer never denied that the chords in the two songs were similar, but called them commonplace musical building blocks that appeared in dozens of other songs.
After deliberating for about three hours, the jury found that Mr. Sheeran had created the song independently.
After the verdict was read out shortly after 1:00 p.m., Mr. Sheeran stood and hugged members of the legal team. He then approached Mr. Townsend’s daughter, Katherine Griffin Townsend, and hugged her as well.
Townsend then said he respected the jury’s decision and defended his father’s legacy.
“I stood up for my father’s intellectual property,” she said. “I was fighting the military.”
She also said she was delighted to finally have the opportunity to speak one-on-one with Mr. Sheeran, and that he invited her to a show on his tour starting Saturday. If we did, we wouldn’t be here today,” she said.
Filed in 2017 and delayed in part by the coronavirus pandemic, the lawsuit raises questions of pop music’s originality and the use of basic musical elements such as chord progressions and simple rhythmic patterns that fall under a single ownership. It had to do with being a person or not. Free to use and adapt by creators or musicians.
These questions are put to the test in a recent series of fear-mongering cases among musicians that the line between inspiration and plagiarism is blurring. Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams’ song “Blurred Lines” has been found to infringe on Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up”. Five years later, the tide has turned. Led Zeppelin wins in court of appeals over his mega-hit “Stairway to Heaven,” with judge ruling over how copyright applies to works containing “mundane elements.” provided guidance.
In Sheeran’s case, plaintiffs argued that the “selection and arrangement” of “Let’s Get It On” was original and warranted protection, even though elements such as code were not individually copyrightable. Sheeran’s side replied that the plaintiff’s case did not pass the high legal standards necessary for such protection.
Sheeran, who has faced lawsuits stemming from accusations of copying twice in the past, has been irritable and sometimes combative on the stand.
“I think it’s really insulting to have someone come in and say, ‘I can’t believe it, they must have stolen it,'” Sheeran said.
He insists he didn’t borrow from “Let’s Get It On,” and while playing an acoustic guitar in a witness box, the chord progressions at the heart of both songs are similar but not identical. showed that
He testified on “Thinking Out Loud” that the second of the four chords in the progression was the major, and rejected the suggestion of Alexander Stewart, a musicologist at the University of Vermont hired by the plaintiff, that it was the minor chord. said code is similar to “Let’s Get It On”
“I know what I’m playing on the guitar,” said Sheeran. “I’m the one playing the chords.”
Sheeran also ridiculed Stewart’s analysis of the melodies of his voice, including an example where some notes were altered, as “criminal”.
The bizarreness of copyright law governed how jurors could hear the two songs. This case included only the underlying structures of both tracks (lyrics, melodies and chords that could be put down on paper), not their recordings. For older songs like “Let’s Get It On,” copyright is limited to the sheet music or “deposit copy” originally filed with the United States Copyright Office. On “Let’s Get It On,” the notation was painstaking.
In other words, the jury never heard Gaye’s original recording, which went to No. 1 in 1973. Instead, defendant offered a computer-generated recreation of what appears in the deposited copy, saying, “If you feel the way I feel, baby, then let’s get started.” Studio recordings of Mr. Sheeran’s songs have been heard many times.
Ms Townsend, who wore a tan coat emblazoned with the word “honesty” across the back, said she filed the lawsuit to protect her father’s legacy. On Monday morning, Ms. Sheeran hugged her as Ms. Townsend returned to court.
Among Ms. Townsend’s litigators was Ben Crump, a nationally renowned civil rights attorney representing the families of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. In his opening statement, he told jurors that the evidence in the case contained “conclusive evidence.” It was a fan video showing Sheeran seamlessly transitioning between “Thinking Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On” at a European concert.
Sheeran defended his “mash-up” technique, saying that he frequently performed such medleys in concert, made possible by mainstream pop music’s limited harmony palette. He cradled his guitar and demonstrated for the jury.
“Most pop songs fit in most pop songs,” Sheeran said. “You can go from ‘Let It Be’ to ‘No Woman, No Cry’ and back.”
In addition to Ms. Townsend, the plaintiffs in this action were Mr. Townsend’s sister, Helen MacDonald, who died after the lawsuit was filed, and the estate of his ex-wife, Sherigale Townsend.
In addition to Sheeran, the defendants included his label, Atlantic Records, and his publisher, Sony Music Publishing.
For the music industry as a whole, Sheeran’s victory maintains the status quo for copyright. After the hiatus of the “Blurred Lines” case, many commentators saw Red He’s Zeppelin victory as bringing copyright cases back into more familiar territory. Katy Perry and her song “Dark Horse” collaborator were direct beneficiaries of this ruling.
Last year, Sheeran released the video after successfully defending an infringement lawsuit in the UK over his hit song “Shape of You.” Social media“There are so many notes used in pop music, so few chords,” he said. “If he releases 60,000 songs a day on Spotify, it must be a coincidence.”
Matt Stevens contributed to the report.
