Singer Ed Sheeran has won his copyright court case amid "similarities" between his single Thinking Out Loud and Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On.
The lawsuit was made by the successors of the late music producer Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the soulful hit with Gaye in the early 1970s.
They claimed that Sheeran’s song Thinking Out Loud unlawfully copied the rhythm of Let’s Get It On as well as a four-chord sequence.
The accusations also referenced “striking similarities” between the two popular songs.
BREAKING: Ed Sheeran has won his copyright trial over similarities between his hit single Thinking Out Loud and the Marvin Gaye classic Let's Get It On
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 4, 2023
Sky's @jamesmatthewsky has all the details https://t.co/45YQUypFYR
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The BBC said Sheeran reportedly told the trial in New York that if he was found guilty he would "quit music."
Sheeran said: "If that happens, I'm done, I'm stopping," he said when asked about the toll the trial at Manhattan federal court was taking on him.
Throughout the week-long hearing, jurors heard arguments from both sides of the case, including Sheeran playing chords on his guitar and singing.
Ed Sheeran sang and played his guitar during copyright lawsuit
Earlier on in the trial, Sheeran was seen playing a few chords on the guitar in front of a jury that was deciding whether his song violates the copyrights of Gaye’s track.
His lawyer Farkas pressed him to explain how he came to write his song Thinking Out Loud a decade ago.
This is when he grabbed his guitar from behind the witness stand and explained that writing a song was second nature to him.
He sang the words “I’m singing out loud” followed by “and then words fall in” as he explained his method of creating music.
According to the BBC, Farkas told the jurors that similarities in the chord progressions and rhythms of the two songs were "the letters of the alphabet of music."
"These are basic musical building blocks that songwriters now and forever must be free to use, or all of us who love music will be poorer for it," she said.
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