Why Does Ed Sheeran Keep Getting Sued?

Photo Dan Martensen

Why does Ed Sheeran keep getting sued?

First it was Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Harris of Xscape. who claimed Mr. Sheeran’s “Shape of You” was similar to their song “No Scrubs” performed by TLC.

Then Mark Harrington and my pal Tom Leonard believed the pop star’s “Photograph” borrowed from “Amazing” — a song the 2 of them wrote for X Factor winner Matt Cardle. There was an undisclosed settlement in a $20 million lawsuit. Mark and Tom were retroactively credited as writers. 

A year later Mr. Sheeran settled yet another lawsuit for a song he wrote for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw called “The Rest of Our Life.” Australian songwriters Sean Carey and Beau Golden alleged it was “blatant copying” of their song “When I Found You.”

Now “Thinking Out Loud” is in the news.  

Are people out to get Ed Sheeran? 

I remember sitting at an outdoor cafe on the Third Street Promenade a few years ago listening to a busker cover “Thinking Out Loud” and thinking to myself 😬 how it reminded me of Van Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey.” “Or was it “Crazy Love”? Or both? Was it the melody, the vibe? Not sure. It just went there.  

Ed has admitted to tipping the hat to Van — "Everyone always channels Michael Jackson and the Beatles and Bob Dylan, and I feel like Van Morrison is a key figure in the music that I make." 

Key figure? Channel? Ok. Fair. 

One of the assignments I give to my college songwriting students is to ‘channel’ their own ‘topline’ (an original melody and lyric) to an existing instrumental (or karaoke) track of a well-known hit that has inspired them. ‘Their’ song can not be released of course (sometimes the 2 versions are too close); the exercise is to simply give them a useful tool with which to get their emotional juices flowing. So, I get channeling.

Curiously, Ed reports that after his song was released Mr. Morrison visited him for breakfast one day and said how much he loved the track. (I wonder if other things were discussed.) In any event they are friends now. Mr. Morrison is not suing Mr. Sheeran. (And Mr. Morrison has not been given retroactive songwriting credit.)

One has to wonder whether all this talk of Van Morrison was to distract from the larger elephant in the room: Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” the song from which the family of Ed Townsend, (producer and co-writer) is claiming Mr. Sheeran borrowed. (To clarify -—it was not Mr. Gaye’s estate making the claim — the one that won a settlement due to similarities between (Robin Thick’s/Pharrell Williams’) “Blurred Lines” and Marvin’s “Got To Give It Up.” I know…Confusing.

However…there’s must be a reason why Marvin Gaye was and remains such a popular muse. He was original. He was his own unique thing. 

I’ve said this before. We all do it — fall into that delicious trap of borrowing something we sincerely believe we wrote. It’s human. We’re influenced by everything that came before and it’s not surprising that we mimic. Just like we inherit our parents’ mannerisms because we’ve grown up around them. But it’s our professional duty to assess our work and adjust as needed. And if we find it’s impossible to separate ‘ours from theirs,’ then we share credit pre-release just as the writers of “I’m A Mess” did with Meredith (Brooks) and I when a resemblance between their track and our song “Bitch” was brought to their attention. 

Ed has argued that “There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify—that’s 22 million songs a year—and there’s only 12 notes that are available.”

I hear this narrative all the time from the majority of my colleagues. Also — that “all this infringing is infringing on our creativity.” If that were the case why are there countless songwriters who’ve survived a career without issue? (And those who are disproportionately sued?) We can’t blame the chord progression or the number of notes available in an octave.  

Perhaps it’s worth a little time put aside after a session to ask ourselves (and our co-writer) if we’ve inadvertently trespassed. And if we’re not sure, present our idea to some honest friends (not our mother) and see what they think. After all, in Mr. Sheeran’s own words, “Lawsuits are depressing and awful.” So why not due diligence to avoid them.?

We’re living in an algorithmic driven culture where familiarity is rewarded. Sampling, mashups, social media opinions etc have made lawsuits even more complicated than they used to be (as if they were ever cut and dry). And with Artificial Intelligence quickly becoming fashionable in the songwriting space the ability to contain that which is now so fluid is going to get even trickier. It’ll be the WILDER West out there. But that may make many creators, including and especially Ed Sheeran, very happy. 

Ed Sheeran is a talented, likable, prolific, relatable artist. I bet if he dug deeper he might stumble on personal fodder that isn’t derivative at all and then maybe he could be the most channel-able artist (Marvin/The Beatles/Dylan/Michael Jackson) of his generation.

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Loved this haunting cover of Ed doing “Who You Are” (which I co-wrote with Jessie J and Toby Gadd.) No infringing here. Just a happy songwriter sharing. 

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