Ed Sheeran has been serenaded in the High Court in London to prove he didn’t copy parts of his 2017 hit “Shape of You” from another artist.
The star is accused of taking the “Oh I, oh I, oh I” hook from his song from Sami Chokri’s 2015 single “Oh Why.”
In court he sang elements from Nina Simone’s Feeling Good and Blackstreet’s No Diggity to illustrate how commonplace the key melody is in popular music.
“If you put them all in the same key, they sound the same,” he explained.
Sheeran denies having heard Chokri’s song and has dismissed the idea that he might have had friends or fellow musicians perform it before writing Shape of You.
His upbeat pop track was the best-selling single of 2017 and remains the most-played song of all time on Spotify, with more than three billion plays.
But Sheeran’s royalties – estimated at around £20million – have been frozen since Chokri and co-writer Ross O’Donoghue claimed copyright infringement in 2018.
The couple’s lawyers played the court notes and vocal drafts from the Shape of You recording sessions as they accused the star of copying elements from Chokri’s track.
In one recording, Sheeran could be heard saying he had to change the “Oh I” melody because it was “a little bit boney.”
“We thought it was a little too close to a song called No Diggity by Blackstreet,” the star told the court. “I said that was a little close to the bone [and] we should change it.”
When asked if his closing melody bears any resemblance to Chokri’s song, he added: “Basically, yes, they are based on the pentatonic scale [and] they both have vowels in them.”
Andrew Sutcliffe QC, representing Chokri and O’Donoghue, asked: “It was a phrase you already have in mind after hearing the chorus of Sam’s song, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Sheeran replied.
The court later heard multiple recordings of Sheeran “stacking” the harmonies of the “Oh I” phrase, which his recording engineer had dubbed “Oh Why.”
“It sounds like you’re singing ‘Oh Why’ doesn’t it?” asked Mr. Sutcliffe.
“The lyrics are, ‘Oh, I’m in love with your body,'” Sheeran said. “Oh, why I’m in love with your body doesn’t make sense.”
The star has been asked repeatedly who thought up the “Oh I” line, but explained it was a collaboration with co-writers Steve Mac and Johnny McDaid.
“All three of us jumped back and forth in circles,” he said.
“Three people could not create the seed of the melody,” suggested Mr. Sutcliffe.
“Why can’t three people create a melody?” replied Sheeran.
The singer has also been accused of being a “music-obsessed squirrel” who consumes music “greedily” and would have been aware of Chokri’s music.
“I’m a music fan, I like music, I listen to music,” Sheeran said. But he insisted that in 2016 he was “disappeared for the whole year” and “not connected to the UK music scene”.
The star also revealed that Shape of You was originally intended for Little Mix or possibly Rihanna and that he didn’t want to release it on his multi-platinum album Divide.
“I thought this song would clash with Castle On The Hill. It doesn’t fit with the rest of the album,” he said.
“I didn’t want to exhibit it and was later proven wrong.”
The singer was briefly irritated when a snippet of an unreleased song was played in court.
“This is a song I wrote last January. How did you come up with that?” he asked. “I want to know how you came up with that.”
It was later explained that some of the music played in court came from Sheeran’s personal laptop and had accidentally accessed the wrong folder.
The case continues.
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