English singer, Ed Sheeran has won a high court battle over whether he plagiarized another artist’s track for his hit single ‘Shape of You’, the most streamed song in Spotify’s history.
In a ruling, Justice Zacaroli, who presided over the case, concluded that Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from ‘Oh Why’ when writing ‘Shape of You’.
After the ruling, Sheeran noted that such “baseless” claims “are way too common”. In a video on social media, he noted that there was now a culture “where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there’s no basis for the claim”.
“It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There are 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 are only 12 notes that are available,” Ed Sheeran said.
Sheeran and his ‘Shape Of You’ co-writers, Snow Patrol’s John McDaid, and producer, Steven McCutcheon, denied copying the 2015 song by Sami Chokri. Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, and his co-writer Ross O’Donoghue, claimed an ‘Oh I’ hook in ‘Shape Of You’ was “strikingly similar” to an ‘Oh Why’ refrain in their track.
Legal proceedings began in May 2018, with Sheeran and his co-writers asking the high court to declare they had not infringed Chokri and O’Donoghue’s copyright. Sheeran also posited at the time that his reputation had been sullied by the allegations. However, two months later, Chokri and O’Donoghue issued their own claim for “copyright infringement, damages and an account of profits in relation to the alleged infringement”. Both parties anticipated costs in the region of €3 million between them.
Sheeran had denied he “borrows” ideas from unknown songwriters without acknowledgment and insisted he “always tried to be completely fair” in crediting people who contributed to his albums. He has already given the writers behind TLC’s 90s hit, ‘No Scrubs’ a credit on ‘Shape of You’ after comparisons were made between the two songs.
Ed Sheeran Sang to Prove his Point
The singer, who spent two days in the witness box, told the court he was trying to clear his name and denied using litigation to intimidate Chokri and O’Donoghue into abandoning the copyright dispute.
According to reports, during the proceedings, the superstar frequently burst into song and hummed musical scales and melodies from Blackstreet’s ‘No Diggity’ and Nina Simone’s classic, ‘Feeling Good’, to demonstrate how common the melody ‘Shape of You’ uses is. He said it uses “a basic minor pentatonic pattern” which is “entirely commonplace”, per reports.
Musicology experts gave contrasting views at the trial. While the American forensic musicologist Anthony Ricigliano noted it was “objectively unlikely” that any similarities between the two tracks “result from copying,” Christian Siddell, another musicologist, noted that he found melodic similarities were “so numerous and striking that the possibility of independent creation is highly improbable”.
According to reports, both agreed that neither of them had found “the same combination of either the ‘Oh Why’ phrase or the ‘Oh I’ phrase in any other compositions”.
‘Shape Of You’ – which Sheeran said he had originally envisaged being performed by Rihanna or Little Mix, was a worldwide hit, becoming the bestselling song of 2017 in the UK.
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