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Ed Sheeran losing will remove “an essential element in every songwriter’s toolkit”, argues lawyer in song-theft case

By | Published on Thursday 4 May 2023

Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran’s threat that he will quit music if he loses the current ‘Thinking Out Loud’ song-theft case in New York might have actually boosted support for the Ed Townsend estate that instigated this legal battle. However, Sheeran’s lawyer warned yesterday, if her client loses, all songwriters lose because of the precedent that ruling will set. And do you really want every single songwriter in the world to lose? Well, do you?

The Townsend estate accuses Sheeran of ripping off Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’ – which Townsend co-wrote – on his 2014 song ‘Thinking Out Loud’. The Sheeran side counters that the two songs simply share some of the same musical building blocks, as do many other songs, including a significant number released before ‘Let’s Get It On’.

During closing arguments in the New York court yesterday, Sheeran’s lawyer Ilene Farkas said that this case should never have filed in the first place. “Ed Townsend did not create these basic musical building blocks”, she added, according to The Independent. “Ed Townsend was not the first songwriter to use and combine these elements. It was not original”.

Like her client, Farkas criticised the musicologist that the Townsend estate hired to tell the court that ‘Let’s Get It On’ and ‘Thinking Out Loud’ are super similar. His expert analysis was “disingenuous and half-baked”, said the lawyer.

And as for the potential impact of a ruling against Sheeran, Farkas stated, according to Law360: “If we start to dissect every song to hunt for similarities and hand out ownership to things as basic as chord progressions and the manner in which they are performed, nothing will be left for songwriters to create. You would be removing an essential element in every songwriter’s toolkit. Is that really what we want to do to music?”

In closing arguments for the plaintiffs, lawyer Keisha Rice told the jury that they shouldn’t be “overwhelmed” by Sheeran’s commercial success or “blinded” by his celebrity.

“No one here wants to damage creativity”, she then stated. “The plaintiffs simply want to discourage theft. That’s the difference. We simply believe that credit should be given where credit is due”.

The jury are set to begin their deliberations later today.



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