After winning his copyright battle in a New York City court, on Friday (5.05), Ed Sheeran stood on a car to perform an impromptu gig on the streets of Manhattan.
Singing songs to the downtown crowd, the 32-year-old superstar singer/songwriter thrilled passers-by while standing on the roof of a vehicle parked outside his pop-up shop in Manhattan’s SoHo district.
As more and more people gathered outside the ‘Ed Sheeran – The Subtract Experience Pop-Up’ store, the mega-talent serenaded them with songs the day after the musician won a $100 million legal battle over his track ‘Thinking out Loud’.
Sheeran was accused of copying elements of Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get it On’ and was sued by the heirs of the song’s co-writer, Ed Townsend. After Ed vehemently denied any wrongdoing, the case ended on Thursday (5.04) with the British pop star being cleared of the plagiarism accusations.
Speaking outside the court house after the verdict was delivered, the pop star stated:
“I’m just a guy with a guitar who loves writing music for people to enjoy. I am not and will not allow myself to be a piggy bank.” “I’m obviously very happy with the outcome of the case and it looks like I’m not having to retire from my day job after all. At the same time I’m unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all. ” “We’ve spent the last eight years talking about two songs with dramatically different lyrics, melodies and four chords which are also different and used by songwriters every day all over the world.” “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.” “They are in a songwriter’s alphabet, our toolkit, and should be there for all of us to use. No one owns them or the way they are played, in the same way that no one owns the colour blue.”
Ed concluded the victory speech by confirmed that he’d been forced to miss his grandmother’s funeral in Ireland to be in New York for the trial and he “won’t get that time back”.
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Author: Al Denté