A British judge has ruled Ed Sheeran “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” plagiarized another artist’s song for his 2017 hit “The Shape of You”. The case has been rumbling away in London’s Royal Courts of Justice over the last month, with Sheeran, co-writer John McDaid and producer Steve McCutcheon facing allegations they lifted elements from little known 2015 song “Oh Why” by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue.
Chokri and O’Donaghue alleged that a hook in ‘The Shape of You’ was stolen from their song without attribution, that they could prove Ed Sheeran had heard ‘Oh Why’, and put a musical expert on the stand who testified the similarities are “so numerous and striking that the possibility of independent creation is highly improbable”.
Mr. Justice Zacaroli disagreed, saying in his judgment that the claimants provided “no more than a speculative foundation for Mr. Sheeran having heard “Oh Why” and that “he did not deliberately copy the OI Phrase from the OW Hook.”
Earlier this morning Sheeran posted a video on Instagram reacting to the decision:
In it, he explained that:
“There are only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music and coincidences are bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released a day on Spotify, that is 22m songs a year, and there are only 12 notes that are available.”
He went on to hope that “baseless claims like this can be avoided”.
Chokri and O’Donaghue may yet take this to the Court of Appeal, though as of right now there’s no indication from the legal team that they’ll pursue this potentially very costly avenue. So, Ed Sheeran isn’t quite out of the woods yet on “The Shape of You”, but this court victory has clearly lifted a weight from his shoulders.
Published: Apr 6, 2022 07:01 am