SECONDS OUT!

Poor old ED SHEERAN! The Halifax born droner seems to spend more time in court than in the studio or on stage these days. You may have read that just yesterday, Ed appeared in a New York court charged with musical plagiarism. This particular issue first emerged in 2016 when the estate of Marvin Gaye sued him  for $100m (£76.4m). The allegation was that Sheran had copied “the melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation and looping” of Gaye’s 1973 classic ‘Let’s Get It On’ for his own ‘Thinking Out Loud’. Then in an unrelated case he was cleared  of copying with his song ‘Shape Of You’ at a trial in London.

Fast forward to last year when investment banker David Pullman and a company called Structured Asset Sales, which has acquired a portion of the estate of ‘Let’s Get It On’ co-writer Ed Townsend, decided to sue the hapless Ed for $100m (£90m) in damages, alleging  that Sheeran and his co-writer Amy Wadge “copied and exploited, without authorisation or credit” the Gaye song, “including but not limited to the melody, rhythms, harmonies, drums, bass line, backing chorus, tempo, syncopation and looping”.

So yesterday, the case eventually pitched up in front of a New York judge. Lawyers for the estate of Townsend called the issue a “smoking gun“. They then went  on to ask him about concert footage recorded in Zurich showing him mixing lyrics from Gaye’s song with ‘Thinking Out Loud.’.

US District Judge Louis Stanton then warned the seven-member jury that despite the fact that music will be played in court: “We don’t allow dancing.”!

The trial is expected to last at least one week. If the jury finds the pop star liable for copyright infringement, the trial will enter a second phase to determine how much he owes.

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