Sheeran’s song sounds ‘very, very similar’ to Gaye’s: music expert
Ed Sheeran was ‘concerned’ and the courtroom in shock after the Thinking Out Loud singer’s accuser collapsed in court during the copyright trial.
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The trial of Ed Sheeran’s alleged copyright infringement was delayed after Kathryn Townsend Griffin, daughter of the writer of Marvin Gaye’s hit “Let’s Get it On”, collapsed in court on the second day of the hearing.
Ms Griffin is suing Sheeran on behalf of her Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 soul classic with Gaye. She collapsed in court late in the afternoon on Wednesday, local time, before the judge declared a short recess.
“Ed turned around as she was being carried out and he looked concerned. He looked worried for her,” a witness told Entertainment Tonight.
“The courtroom was in shock. No one was allowed to leave,” they continued. “It was total chaos when it first happened.”
Ms Griffin was carried out of the court in a stretcher and was taken to hospital, the court heard. Her lawyers said she had a pre-existing medical condition that could have contributed to the medical emergency.
MUSIC EXPERT GIVES VERDICT
Musician Ed Sheeran’s court case has continued in a US federal court on Wednesday local time over whether the British pop star plagiarised American music icon Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” in his own 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud.”
On Tuesday, Sheeran had declared on the stand he’d have to “be an idiot” to have copied the classic song.
But on Wednesday in New York, music expert, Dr Alexander Stewart, testified about the similarities he sees in the two songs, saying that the chord progression in the two songs “sound very, very similar” to him.
Sheeran is accused of copying “Let’s Get It On” by the heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 hit with Gaye. Townsend’s daughter Kathryn Griffin, sister Helen McDonald and the estate of his former wife, Cherrigale Townsend, are the listed plaintiffs on the “Thinking Out Loud” case. Gaye died in 1984 and Townsend died in 2003.
Dr Stewart said he believed the two songs “have the same harmonic rhythm”, referring to the rate of change of the chords. In particular, he said, he sees melodic similarities in the verse, chorus and interlude of Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud”.
British singer Sheeran’s legal team has argued that the sounds used in both songs are common in pop music. “No one owns basic musical building blocks,” Ilene Farkas, Sheeran’s lawyer, told the jury on Tuesday.
SHEERAN’S CASE KICKS OFF IN COURT
Sheeran arrived on Tuesday local time at the courthouse in Manhattan silently and with his head lowered, wading past the throng of cameras and journalists stationed outside.
At issue in the New York case are alleged “striking similarities and overt common elements” between Gaye and Sheeran’s songs.
The plaintiffs are the heirs of Ed Townsend, a musician and producer who co-wrote Gaye’s 1973 soul classic, who were also in court.
Under questioning from Keisha Rice, a lawyer for the heirs, Sheeran was asked about his song “Take It Back,” which contains the lyric “plagiarism is hidden.”
“Those are my lyrics, yep,” said Sheeran, adding “Can I give some context to them?”.
Rice said if she needed more context, she would ask.
She then asked Sheeran about a video clip of a show in which he performed Gaye’s song live as a medley with “Thinking Out Loud.”
Ben Crump, another lawyer for the heirs, had earlier said the performance amounted to a confession by Sheeran.
Sheeran said he sometimes mashed up songs with similar chords at his gigs, but grew frustrated when Rice cut off his response.
“I feel like you don’t want me to answer because you know that what I’m going to say is actually going to make quite a lot of sense,” he said.
Earlier Sheeran’s lawyer, Ilene Farkas, said the two songs are different and told jurors that the plaintiffs should not be allowed to “monopolise” a chord progression and melody that are used in countless songs.
“No one owns basic musical building blocks,” Farkas said.
Industry members are closely following the copyright lawsuit as it could set precedent for protections on songwriters’ creations and open the door to legal challenges elsewhere.
It’s the second trial in a year for Sheeran, who successfully testified at a London court last April in a case centred around his song “Shape Of You,” saying that lawsuit was emblematic of copyright litigation going too far. The judge ruled in his favour.
“I am here for justice, protecting my father’s intellectual properties,” Townsend’s daughter Kathryn Townsend Griffin told journalists outside the courthouse.
“As Marvin Gaye would say, ‘Let’s get it on,’” quipped Ben Crump, lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” shot up America’s Billboard Hot 100 charts when it was released, and won Sheeran a Song of the Year prize at the Grammys in 2016.
Townsend’s family has pointed out that the group Boyz II Men has performed mash-ups of the two songs, and that Sheeran has blended the songs together on stage as well.
The lawsuit, filed in 2016 – and refiled in 2017 after being rejected on procedural grounds – also names Sony.
Sheeran’s team contests the allegations, saying “there are dozens if not hundreds of songs that predate and postdate” Gaye’s song, “utilising the same or similar chord progression.”
“These medleys are irrelevant to any issue in the case and would be misleading [and] confuse the jury.”
There have been a flood of such copyright trials in recent years, notably in 2016 when Gaye’s family – who is not part of the New York lawsuit against Sheeran – successfully sued the artists Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I. over similarities between the song “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s “Got to Give it Up.”
They were ordered to pay some $US5 million ($7.5m) in damages, in a result that surprised many in the industry including legal experts who saw many of the musical components cited as foundational musical elements largely in the public domain.
Five years later an appeals court decision confirmed Led Zeppelin’s victory over a similar case with the classic “Stairway to Heaven” at issue.
But jury trials over music copyright could go any which way, and in this case likely will ultimately come down to the arrangement of a single chord progression.
A musicologist retained by the defence says in court documents that the four-chord sequence was used in a number of songs before Gaye’s hit came out in 1973.
“There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music,” Sheeran said in an Instagram video last April.
“Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 are being released every day on Spotify.”
With AFP
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