Ed Sheeran was perplexed in court when a fresh new song was accidentally played during his “Shape of You” trial.
”That’s a song I wrote last January,’ Mr Sheeran remarked, glancing at his attorneys. ‘How have you got that?’
Mr Sheeran’s attorney, Ian Mill QC, subsequently told the court that the music being played as he was requested to listen to early recordings from the making of Shape of You left him “disconcerted.”
“I want to know how you got that,” Sheeran screamed at Andrew Sutcliffe QC.
When attempting to discover a recording of Shape of You on iTunes, the file was mistakenly clicked on.
Mr Mill stated that the event occurred ‘by mistake’ while using Mr McCutcheon’s computer and iTunes, which he said ‘contains some unreleased material.’
The 31-year-old singer-songwriter is facing a copyright lawsuit over his smash single, which two composers allege plagiarizes sections of their song.
Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, who wrote “Oh Why,” have accused Sheeran of taking aspects of “Shape of You” from their own song.
The duo claims that the song contains “particular lines and phrases” from their own work, stating that Sheeran’s refrain of “Oh I” is “strikingly similar” to their delivery of “Oh why.”
Sheeran also performed bits of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good and Blackstreet’s No Diggity, according to the BBC, to highlight how melodies are popular in pop music.
‘If you put them all in the same key, they’ll sound the same,’ he said.
Mr Sheeran regularly broke into song and hummed musical scales and melodies while being questioned in court yesterday about how Shape of You was put together.
When questioned whether the hooks were similar, Mr Sheeran described them as employing the “pentatonic scale” with “vowels,” with many early incarnations of portions of Shape of You played in court.
The song’s royalties, believed to be worth over £20 million, have been blocked since the case began in 2018.
In May 2018, Sheeran and his Shape of You co-writers, Steven McCutcheon and Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, filed a lawsuit in the High Court, claiming they had not infringed on Chokri and O’Donoghue’s copyright.
Chokri and O’Donoghue then filed their own lawsuit, alleging “copyright infringement, damages, and an account of profits in relation to the alleged infringement.”
Sheeran, who has been labeled a “magpie” who “borrows” other musicians’ ideas, played other songs during the trial, including Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” and Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” in an effort to show how widespread the song’s melody is.
