The 'Lego House' hitmaker sings 'Thinking Out Loud' and explains the creative process of making the hit single as he takes a stand in copyright infringement trial.
- Apr 29, 2023
AceShowbiz - Ed Sheeran belted out his song in court in an attempt to prove his innocence. The 32-year-old pop star is taken to court by Kathryn Griffin Townsend for allegedly ripping off the 1973 classic track "Let's Get It On", which was co-written by her late father Ed Townsend and famously performed by Marvin Gaye, for his number one hit "Thinking Out Loud", and he picked up his guitar and briefly sang for the jury during the trial on Thursday, April 27.
"When I write vocal melodies, it's like phonetics," he said on the stand in New York.
The "Perfect" hitmaker then sang the phrase "I'm singing out now", which he explained was the original line when he was writing the song with collaborator Amy Wadge, and played the chord progression to the court. He also sang his track's opening line, "When your legs don't work like they used to."
Ed explained in the courtroom that he preferred to "write quickly" and claimed that he has even penned eight or nine songs in a day, with some tunes being put together in a matter of minutes in the past.
Lawyers for Kathryn previously showed Ed and members of the jury the two songs being performed live in a video that transitioned one into the other "seamlessly" and argued his 2014 concert footage amounted to proof of the alleged plagiarism.
Ed replied, "Most pop songs can fit over most pop songs … if I had done what you're accusing me of doing, I'd be a quite an idiot to stand on a stage in front of 20,000 people and do that!"
On Wednesday, April 26, Kathryn collapsed once she was outside the doors and was lying on the ground while someone shouted for a medic. Judge Louis L. Stanton later announced that she had been taken to hospital.
Although her lawyer has not disclosed the reason for her fainting, they said she has a pre-existing medical condition. At the time she collapsed, music expert Alexander Stewart was being cross-examined.
