Ed Sheeran on Trial for Alleged Marvin Gaye Plagiarism

Did one of the current kings of pop, Ed Sheeran, plagiarize Marvin Gaye’s famous song, “Let’s get it on”, for his planetary hit “Thinking out loud”? In federal court in New York, an emblematic copyright lawsuit opened on Tuesday, in the presence of Ed Sheeran and the family of the co-author of Gaye’s title.

It’s the second trial in a year for the 32-year-old British singer and songwriter, who won a separate court battle in London’s High Court last April that dismissed two musicians accusing him of copying one of their works, for his mega hit “Shape of you”.

This time, the plaintiffs are the heirs of Ed Townsend, an American musician and producer who co-wrote “Let’s get it on” with Marvin Gaye. Released in 1973, this soul classic has remained famous for its guitar notes and the sensual vocals of the prince of soul and the Motown label.

In front of the federal court in Manhattan, Ed Sheeran arrived, head bowed, without saying a word to the forest of cameras, followed by the daughter of Townsend, Kathryn Townsend Griffin. “I’m here for justice, to protect my father’s intellectual property,” she told reporters.

“Let’s go!”

The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Ben Crump, launched by taking up the title of the tube “Let’s get it on”: “As Marvin Gaye would have said, let’s go!”.

In their copyright claim, Townsend’s heirs claim there are “striking similarities” to 2014’s “Thinking Out Loud.”

They want proof that the group Boyz 2 Men had mixed the two songs on stage. Ed Sheeran himself had chained in concert the lines of voices, very different, of the two tubes, on the same guitar harmonies, a sequence still visible on the internet.

A “proof” disputed by the singer’s lawyers, for whom “there are dozens, even hundreds of songs before and after + Let’s get it on + that use the same chord progression or a similar progression”.

Ed Sheeran’s hit ranked 2nd on the Billboard Hot 100, the American reference ranking and won the Grammy Award for best song of the year in 2016.

The complaint, filed in 2016, was first dismissed on a procedural issue, then filed again in 2017, also against Sony.

As in New York, Ed Sheeran came in person to defend his song “Shape of you” in the previous trial in London, a case he considered emblematic of abusive practices that undermine creation.

The London judge had agreed with Ed Sheeran, considering that he had not copied, even “unconsciously”, part of the melody of the song “Oh why” (2015) by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue.

The judge had noted “obvious similarities” between the two songs, with a melody resulting in particular from the minor pentatonic scale like “countless songs from pop, rock, folk and blues”, but also “significant differences”.

The American Marvin Gaye is considered one of the great artists of soul and popular music of the last century. Born in 1939 in Washington, he died in 1984 in Los Angeles, killed by his father after an argument on the eve of his 45th birthday.

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