Ed Sheeran now films his entire recording process due to plagiarism claims
Sheeran recently won a suit concerning his song "Shape Of You"
Aux News Ed Sheeran
After winning a plagiarism suit in relation to his song “Shape Of You” on Wednesday, singer Ed Sheeran shares that for years now he’s filmed his entire recording process for his album just to fend off any other claims.
“Now I just film everything, everything is on film,” Sheeran tells BBC.
“We’ve had claims come through on the songs and we go, well here’s the footage and you watch. You’ll see there’s nothing there,” he adds.
High Court Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled in favor of Sheeran this week, saying he “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from the 2015 song “Oh Why” by Sami Chokri, despite any so-called “indisputable similarity between the works.”
“It is so painful to hear someone publicly and aggressively challenge your integrity,’’ Sheeran, Snow Patrol’s John McDaid, and producer Steven McCutcheon said following the ruling. “It is so painful to have to defend yourself against accusations that you have done something that you haven’t done, and would never do.’’
This is far from the first lawsuit leveled at Sheeran, as the singer settled one back in 2014 concerning his song “Photograph.” In the same interview with BBC, Sheeran says he stopped playing the song for a while, and “personally” regrets not fighting the suit. It was shortly after this he started recording his song-writing process.
“I just stopped playing it,” he says. “I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty.”
Listen, we’d probably start recording our every creative move if we were getting slammed with copyright lawsuits on the regular. (Or we’d simply write better music.) On the bright side for the singer, when there’s an inevitable documentary made about one of the biggest names in modern music, there will be plenty behind the scenes footage available.
65 Comments
Look, I know we all hate Robin Thicke but can we at least recognize that the lawsuit from Marvin Gaye was bullshit, and that it set a stupid precedent for copyright claims in music?
I doubt anyone here is going to disagree with that. That should be pretty much consensus among people who really care about art and music.And yeah, it sucks that this involves having to defend the likes Robin Thicke and Ed Sheeran. But this isn’t about how bad or good the music is or isn’t, of course.
it’s wild to think about how hip hop producers in the 80s used to just be able to take an entire song from the 60s/70s, chorus included, and maybe lift drums and sounds from another song, loop it and call it a day. i’m not saying it’s uncomplicated or anything, but it used to be about finding interesting songs and sounds that other people made and interpolating them into something new.there are just so so so many songs and albums that would be impossible to release for the first time now.there’s a song on mc hammer’s ‘please hammer don’t hurt em’ that is literally just him rapping over prince’s ‘when doves cry’, not to mention the rick james lawsuit at the time for ‘can’t touch this’
Some of those were part of the problem, some were legitimately great art. songs where they were rapping over someone else’s song such as “Can’t Touch This” and “Ice Ice Baby” were examples of actual copyright violation in my opinion and it’s unfortunate that they ripped off those songs becuase they originally brought the concept of samples being potential copyright violations into widespread awareness. On the other hand, the musicians and producers you’re talking about created genuinely original works of art, and it’s sad to thing that we’ll never get that back. One of my favorite albums (Endtroducing… by DJ Shadow) features NO newly recorded music and it’s one of the most original and unique albums I own.
Endtroducing pretty much soundtracked my life between 96 and 02.
“Copyright infringement is your best entertainment value.” – Negativland
It’s not sampling that’s a problem, it’s sampling without getting permission and giving compensation. Nothing’s saying you can’t make that kind of art, you just can’t be a dick about it.
the lawsuit from Marvin Gaye was bullshitMarvin Gaye was killed in 1984.
OK, the lawsuit from Marvin Gaye’s estate. my mistake.
I’m pretty sure that’s not true. I JUST heard him on the radio.
Marvin Gaye’s ghost is up to some bullshit for sure.
Or so the Germans would have us believe
Nope. The estate was right. Straight theft.
Some of my most clever ideas come while I’m taking a dump. Good thing I’ve been filming them all along.
After a while, everybody’s going to tread the same ground on occasion. Doesn’t mean you should lift if you know better, but Jesus, even Paul McCartney had to ask everybody in The Beatles’ circle if they had heard a melody he dreamed up one night, which eventually became “Yesterday,” and that was 1965.
Paul was asking because he couldn’t believe it didn’t exist, and didn’t want to pursue it if it did. He wasn’t afraid of being sued, he was afraid of being embarassed to create a song only to have someone say, “That’s “Past, Present and Future” by the Shangri-Las.”
And some ground gets tread more often than others—chord sequences come in and out of fashion. Since you can’t copyright chord progressions, you see some of the same patterns come up over and over in pop music. My favorite example of this is James Arthur’s “Say you Won’t Let Go” from a couple of years ago. It’s basically a combination of The Script’s lyrics/phrasing from The Man Who Can’t be Moved” and Adele’s melody from “Someone Like You.” And when you listed to all three, yep, there are definite similarities. The Script’s lyrical phrasing in particular is very close to Arthur’s delivery of his song. But really what makes them sound the same is that all three use the same chord progression in roughly the same way.I think you can make the case, comparing all three songs, that Arthur isn’t the most original artist working today. Plagiarism would be difficult to make stand up in court, however, because of how these cases look at published music and things like chord progressions.
(Or we’d simply write better music.)Oh fuck off
Yeah love or hate Ed Sheeran, I feel like we’re missing a bit of journalistic objectivity here.
AV Club has journalists?
STOP THE PRESSES
I was clearly mistaken!
This is technically a blog site, journalistic objectivity doesn’t factor in around these parts.
Ohhhhh see I didn’t realize that. Fair enough then, I reckon.
Mediocre blog writer to popular song writer: write better!
Ed Sheeran Should and Can Write Better Songs, Popular Blog Pops Off at Pop Star.Read all about it!
“Look, sure, I could’ve be an insanely rich, successful and popular singer-songwriter if I’d wanted to. But I chose to write snarky, superfluous pop-culture articles for an ailing clickbait website run by corporate overlords who treat me and my colleagues as disposable.”
Building a time machine to go back in time and determine whether this guy needed to be bullied more or less to prevent him from having a huge music career. Dude gives me fuckin hives
Seems pretty easy to ignore completely. Surely time travel could be utilized in way more fun ways.
Like trying to catch a glimpse of Chester A Arthur’s butthole.
Deep, deep cut. I’m in
Wow, having a violent psychosomatic reaction to a celebrity sounds really concerning. I hope you’re getting the therapy needed to help you function like a normal person.
There’s going to be more of these lawsuits as artists are pressed to put out more albums quicker by greedy execs and everyone thinks they are the next YouTube star. Similarities will be made but in the end, it’s up to the courts to decide.
I can’t get over the fact that the solution to this is “record all recording sessions,” as though the entire creative process occurs in a closed room and therefore no external influences can seep in.
This is the thing. It may sound impressive to say that you record everything, but in court, that will actually probably matter very little. Sure, you’ve got video of your songwriting session, but did you also videotape your drive to the studio with the radio on? Or when you cooked dinner last night while listening to an indie rock station? A recording captures a moment in time, without any other context. If someone accused you of plagiarism, and you brought video into court, the question the other party’s lawyer is going to have will be, “OK, but what happened an hour before you wrote this? Or the night before? How does this video prove you’ve never heard my client’s song? Could you have heard the song before this session and brought its melody with you into the studio?” That’s how the recordings don’t really prove anything. Maybe it makes Sheeran feel a bit better, a bit freer, but the reality is that as a piece of evidence, the tapes probably wouldn’t do much for him in court.
In the sciences, a lab notebook is admissible in a court of law, and it only captures what you wrote down.But it was written down contemporaneously, and over many days, showing the incremental development of your work.I don’t see that this would be seen any differently. If you can show a record of yourself developing something from scratch, and the person making the claim that you copied from them has nothing to support their claim except similarities in the final versions, then the court will decide the balance of evidence supports the two works of art being developed separately.
Exactly. All this could possibly prove is that he didn’t discuss exactly how he ripped the song off with his producer, not whether or not he consciously or subconsciously did so
Right? He’s just wasting space on his hard drive or wherever he’s storing all this footage.
won’t anyone think of the poor Cloud, storing all this unnecessary video data? OH MY LORD SOMEONE PLEASE INTERVENE BEFORE THIS GOES EVEN FURTHER
I dunno. It sounds dumb and tedious, but if it goes to trial and you force a jury (or however these cases are decided) to watch nineteen hours of you workshopping a song, it’s certainly better than nothing. It doesn’t show the minutiae of your lived experience including all consumed media, but it does prove you’re not watching videos on youtube and lifting beats or lyrics, which is what these lawsuits imply.
He could… watch the videos and then remember the beats or lyrics inside his brainmeats until he gets to the studio
As I understand it (as I learned during my time working at a radio station), with music copyright claims have to prove a deliberate knowledge and use. Sheeran hearing a song and subconsciously remembering it isn’t a deliberate use. It’s the reason why you can have songs that clearly have the same rhythm line, or similar bass lines, and they aren’t considered illicit. Art is art and regularly mimics the same themes. Just like you can’t copyright a movement, or a scent, you can’t simply copyright all notes. You have to prove the artist knew what they were doing, at least in some regard.
Yep. It helps to remember that there is nothing scientific or absolute about these court proceedings. There isn’t really even a consistent standard.The prosecution’s case will be tenuous and argued through means that don’t definitively prove anything either. This is about having something for his defense attorneys to present as counter evidence to sway the jury back.
You have a point.
On the other hand it’s pretty standard practice to have a temp track in the session you’re working on, at least to have an example of the kind of effects you want and production sound you’re aiming for.
If Sheeran’s entire recording process doesn’t have a temp track then it shows what he’s recording ostensibly comes from his head.
Yeah, I don’t understand this. What is he proving he’s not doing by filming everything?
And he knows he’s recording. So he can make sure to not to do the plagiarism part on camera.
BUT WHO RECORDS THE RECORDERS?!?
Depending on his process, it might serve as persuasive evidence – a lot of songs sound very different in the demo stages, and if you can prove that a song didn’t sound like the one it’s accused of ripping off until a tempo change or something then that’s a pretty strong case. Convergent evolution is a thing.
Funnest thing about this whole imbroglio was Sheeran’s people saying: musical genius Sheeran wins lawsuit, when Sheeran’s defense was essentially: all pop music is basically the same anyway, why pick on me?
I’m not clear on how this would help. If he films himself doodling at the piano and he plays a riff identical to something found in, say, a Beatles song, how does that prove that he didn’t plagiarize it? Because he didn’t get the sheet music from the Beatles song and make a photocopy it, and say out loud “I will now include the portion from this Beatles song into my song, we will not pay them for this or acknowledge that it is from that song”? He could have still just played the riff from memory. And why couldn’t the plaintiff just say well he just edited out the footage?
All of Sheeran’s songs sound like other songs. I don’t think it’s ever plagiarism. It’s just copying established formulas.
to be honest, when i heard about the lawsuit, i thought it was TLC suing him for ripping of ‘no scrubs.’
The writers of No Scrubs are credited on the song.
Listen, we’d probably start recording our every creative move if we were getting slammed with copyright lawsuits on the regular. (Or we’d simply write better music.) This is rich coming from a site that hasn’t discovered proofreading.
Somewhere AV Club decided to be a blog with each article containing at least one hot take.
They know what they’re doing and who their audience is.
Conspiracy theory: Kinja’s inability to handle hyperlinks (despite this being a core feature of the internet since forever) is actually a deliberate glitch to discredit people complaining about the quality and incoherence of the article writing.
New streaming series with all this footage incoming
*Olivia Rodrigo frantically deletes her song ‘Why Oh’ from her new album*
I don’t know about the UK, but US copyright law on songs has been fucked up ever since the “Blurred Lines” lawsuit back in 2014. This is just smart on his part.
If I was Ed Sheeran my response would be “Hey, bad artists steal. Good artists *homage*.” followed by a cheeky wink.
If I was Ed Sheeran I’d spend money and have sex with lady singers.
Recording the sessions doesn’t do any good or prove/disprove anything. He can still continue to rip off other musicians based on songs he’s heard throughout his life.
“Listen, we’d probably start recording our every creative move if we were getting slammed with copyright lawsuits on the regular. (Or we’d simply write better music).”Maybe try simply writing better about music first.
Just don’t make me watch it, please.
Ed should just do what Olivia Rodrigo does when people call out her lifting chunks of other, recently released songs. Just say “whoopsie doodle!” and retroactively give writing credit.