Ed Sheeran said he’d need to be an “idiot” to tear Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” after which perform it for hundreds of fans – becoming increasingly agitated after being grilled within the grandstand at a federal lawsuit on Tuesday, in accused of copyright infringement.
The British singer-songwriter has attempted to refute claims that a video of him performing a fusion of Gaye’s 1973 R&B classic and his own Grammy-winning song “Considering Out Loud” at a 2014 concert was a “confession”.
“If I did what you are accusing me of, I’d be an idiot to face on a stage in front of 20,000 people and do it,” an annoyed Sheeran, 32, told a Manhattan federal court.
The singer of “Shape of You” fell out with Keisha Rice, an attorney for the heirs of the late Ed Townsend – the co-author of the soul song Gaye – who filed a lawsuit against Sheeran in 2017.
During opening statements, one other of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Ben Crump, argued that Sheeran had made a “deposition” combining each hits during a live performance in Zurich, Switzerland.
The clip was shown in a courtroom of Sheeran jumping between “Considering Out Loud” and “Let’s Get It On” – with Crump calling the video the “smoking gun” of the case.
But when he was summoned to the grandstand by Rice, the pop star tried to downplay the purported significance of the performance.
“I mix songs at a whole lot of gigs,” said Sheeran, who also testified that he first heard Gaye’s classic on 1997’s Austin Powers.
Sheeran’s frustration got here after he was inundated with questions on his musical education and whether he had taken music plagiarism classes.
“I have never accomplished a level in plagiarism,” Sheeran blurted out.
He claimed that the chord sequence in query – 1-3-4-5 – is common in pop songs and that artists often mix songs together, specifically mentioning The Beatles’ “Let It Be”.
“Whenever you play a song live and it matches in the identical key, most pop songs revolve around the identical three or 4 chords,” Sheeran said.
Rice and Sheeran awkwardly fought off the volley, including the moment the singer asked Google to make use of it to read the lyrics to his song, which the plaintiffs’ attorney had recited during her cross-examination.
His lawyers argued of their opening statement that the chord sequence in “Let’s Get It On” had been utilized in other songs before Townsend collaborated with Gaye on the 1973 track.
“[From] Buddy Holly to The Beach Boys to The Bee Gees to Elton John…they used this chord progression before Ed Townsend,” said Sheeran’s lawyer Ilene Farkas, arguing that chord progression was taught in elementary piano textbooks, including one published in 1967 – Six years before Gaye’s R&B hit.
Experts from either side are expected to take a stand on Wednesday, when Amy Wadge, co-writer of Sheeran’s “Considering Out Loud,” can also be expected to testify.