A lawsuit against Ed Sheeran alleges that his song “Thinking Out Loud” plagiarises the timeless Marvin Gaye song “Let’s Get It On.” The trial for this claim is currently in progress. While his lawyers have been unsuccessfully attempting to have the case dismissed for the past few months, he is now raising the stakes by threatening to completely stop making music if he is found guilty of copyright infringement.
Per New York Post, when Sheeran’s attorney asked what he’d do if the plaintiffs won the case, he responded: “If that happens, I’m done. I’m stopping… I find it really insulting to work my whole life as a singer-songwriter and diminish it.”
Ed Sheeran has adamantly maintained that any similarities between his 2014 hit and Gaye’s 1973 song are coincidental and that they are too widespread to be considered copyright infringement.
He apparently “belted out various mashups of Van Morrison songs for the courtroom on Monday” in order to make his argument more forcefully, although this probably did not aid him as much as he had hoped.
The federal copyright infringement case was filed back in 2018 by Structured Asset Sales, an entity that owns part of the copyrights of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote “Let’s Get It On.”
In September 2022, Judge Louis Stanton decided that Sheeran and Structured Asset Sales would have to argue their points in front of a jury, who would then decide if “Thinking Out Loud” indeed copied “Let’s Get It On.”
Sheeran didn’t seem to address whether the decision will have an effect on his upcoming “Mathematics Tour,” which begins this week.
In addition to a few small-scale theatre performances, the North American tour includes arena performances. Search for seats and offers on StubHub, where orders are 100 percent insured through the company’s FanProtect programme. StubHub is a secondary market ticket website where prices can vary depending on supply and demand.
