Los Angeles, May 9 (IANS) ‘Shape of You singer Ed Sheeran has spoken about his victory in the ‘Thinking Out Loud copyright infringement lawsuit last week.
Stating that he feels the jury believed that he did not copy Marvin Gaye’s 1973 hit ‘Let’s Get It On’ for his song, Sheeran furnished the reasons behind the same, reports ‘Variety’.
Sheeran told ‘Good Morning America’ that it was “101 songs with the same chord sequence, and that was just, like, scratching the surface”. He added that the jury “was very quick to see that and be like, ‘Oh, yeah'”.
As per ‘Varietu’, Sheeran had been steadfast in his denial that he’d taken from Gaye’s song, despite the lawsuit brought by the family of Gaye’s co-writer on the song, the late Ed Townsend.
Sheeran’s song does recall the tempo and chord progression of Gaye’s hit, but finally, his testimony and performance of the song, solo on acoustic guitar, during the trial helped lean the jury in his favour. He even mashed it up with other songs that are generally similar.
Asked what inspired him to bring his guitar to the court, Sheeran said, “I’d been wanting to do it for ages since it came out, but you have to do due diligence in court. So I just waited and knew that I would have my day to explain it and didn’t rush anything.”
A New York jury took just three hours of deliberation to reach its verdict last Thursday.
Outside the courtroom, Sheeran had said, “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to make music long after we are all gone. They are in a songwriter’s ‘alphabet’, our toolkit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them or the way they are played, in the same way that nobody owns the colour blue.”
–IANS
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