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Matt Cardle distances himself from Ed Sheeran plagiarism case

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 10 June 2016

Now, people, don’t you even be thinking for just one moment that Matt Cardle has a beef with Ed Sheeran. I mean, if he did, we’d make it Beef Of The Week, wouldn’t we? And we didn’t. Not at all. It wasn’t even up for consideration. Because Cardle doesn’t have a beef with Sheeran, see. He thinks Sheeran is the business. A total top dude.

“Please read news articles closely”, said the ‘X-Factor’ alumnus on Twitter yesterday, which is wishful thinking, doesn’t he know we live in a world where people get all their news from entirely misleading headlines. “This is not my lawsuit”, he added. “I think Ed Sheeran is a genius and 100% deserves all his success”.

The lawsuit, of course, is that being pursued by songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard, who penned Cardle’s 2012 miss ‘Amazing’, and who are now suing Sheeran and his songwriter buddy Johnny McDaid off of Snow Patrol over allegations Ed’s hit ‘Photograph’ borrows a great deal from their song.

Or, in the words of Harrington and Leonard’s lawsuit: “The songs’ similarities reach the very essence of the work. The similarities go beyond substantial, which is itself sufficient to establish copyright infringement, and are in fact striking”.

The duo’s lawyer, Richard Busch, was last seen successfully suing Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams on behalf of the Marvin Gaye estate, which reckoned that the terrible twosome’s hit ‘Blurred Lines’ ripped off Gaye track ‘Got To Give It Up’, so he knows a thing or two about plagiarism cases. Even though many commentators, after listening to ‘Amazing’ and ‘Photograph’, are saying, “hmmmmmmmmmm, well, they’re kind of similar aren’t they?” Which isn’t quite as resolute as what Busch is saying.

But still, as far as Cardle is concerned, this is an open and shut case. That should go completely in Sheeran’s favour. I mean that’s the “success” Cardle reckons Sheeran “100% deserves”, right?

There’s more discussion of this case on this week’s edition of the CMU Podcast, which you can listen to here.