Ed Sheeran indicated that he’s ready to quit the music business if he loses his current copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Marvin Gaye’s estate.
The British musician’s attorney Ilene Farkas asked him what would happen if he lost, prompting Sheeran to reply, “If that happens, I’m done – I’m stopping. I find it really insulting to work my whole life as a singer-songwriter and diminish it.”
Gaye’s estate accused Sheeran of copying the iconic 1973 single “Let’s Get It On” for his Grammy-winning hit, “Thinking Out Loud.” The trial began Monday in New York.
“Did you copy anything from ‘Let’s Get it On’ when you wrote ‘Thinking Out Loud?’” Farkas asked the musician outright during the trial, per The New York Post.
“No,” he said.
The “Shape of You” composer also performed parts of the song along with multiple Van Morrison songs, including “Tupelo Honey” and “Crazy Love,” on the stand. His “Thinking Out Loud” co-writer Amy Wadge took Sheeran’s side, claiming the song they came up with sounded more similar to Morrison’s work than it did to Gaye’s.
“Once we had written and Ed started playing it from the phone, we both said it was a Van (Morrison) song,” she said. “It had the same sort of feel as a Van Morrison song.”
Farkas previously argued that the four-chord progression in questions was very basic and that “no one owns basic musical building blocks.” Sheeran’s legal team wrote in an earlier written filing, “The two songs share versions of a similar and unprotectable chord progression that was freely available to all songwriters.”
Sheeran has been sued for copyright infringement before. A judge ruled in 2022 that the singer’s single “Shape of You” was not a copy of Sami Switch’s song “Oh Why.” The musician also got sued but settled out of court over accusations of plagiarism with his 2016 single “Photograph.”
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The “Bad Habits” singer previously expressed frustrations about these types of lawsuits in 2022.
“It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There’s only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music,” Sheeran said during a video post he shared on Instagram.
“Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That’s 22 million songs a year, and there’s only 12 notes that are available. I’m not an entity. I’m not a corporation. I’m a human being. I’m a father. I’m a husband. I’m a son. Lawsuits are not a pleasant experience.”