The music of Ed Sheeran and Marvin Gaye are poles apart. One is a sugarcoated world and the other is like having a scoop of vanilla ice cream with caramel dripping. So what’s taking Sheeran’s song to court?
Ed Sheeran has a song called Thinking Out Loud. You may have heard it as many times as you have asked for a second helping of rasmalai. And there is the classic Marvin Gaye classic, Let’s Get It On to which couples have been turning off bedroom lights since 1973. The song was written by Gaye and Ed Townsend, who died in 2003. But the owners of the rights of Ed Townsend’s efforts are not satisfied. They are saying that Thinking Out Loud resembles Let’s Get It On because they share almost identical chord progressions and similar bass lines.
Sheeran is ready to begin a longdelayed trial in federal court in New York over his song. The resemblance is so uncanny that YouTuber Rick Beato has put the songs together. The question he asks: “Should we take the definition of what a song is, meaning, the lyrics and the melody, which are completely different? Should that be the basis for what decides this lawsuit?”
Courts have had to deal with a number of such cases, involving Robin Thicke, Katy Perry, the Weeknd and Dua Lipa. In fact, in 2020, Led Zeppelin won a major battle when the US Supreme Court said it would not hear a case over whether Zeppelin copied a part of a 1968 song (Taurus) by Spirit. How similar can be too similar is the question. In 2015, Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines was dealt a blow. A jury decided that the song by him and Pharrell Williams infringed on the copyright of another Gaye classic, Got to Give It Up, and Gaye’s heirs were awarded more than $5 million in damages.
Each case is different and so is the jury. What remains to be seen is whether the Led Zeppelin ruling would help Ed Sheeran.