Ed Sheeran sang and played guitar in a New York court case on Thursday in a bid to convince jurors he did not copy Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On.
Sheeran is being sued in a civil case by the heirs to Gaye’s co-writer, Ed Townsend, who claim that he infringed copyright with parts of his hit Thinking Out Loud.
Around an hour into his testimony, Sheeran grabbed a guitar and began to sing parts of Thinking Out Loud while explaining how he came to write the song.
“I draw inspiration a lot from things in my life and family,” he told jurors, denying that he had been influenced by Gaye’s 1973 hit.
Sheeran testified how he wrote the song in 2014 at his home in England with friend and collaborator Amy Wadge.
He said he used his own version of phonetics to create songs so quickly that he could write up to nine in a day.
Demonstrating, he played a few bars of the song, singing, “I’m singing out loud,” which was eventually changed to the title of the song.
After he sang those words, he spoke a few too, saying “and then words fall in" as he tried to explain his process for creating songs.
The musician said the song had been inspired by his grandparents’ love for each other, his grandfather’s recent death and a new romantic relationship he had just begun.
Lawyers for the heirs earlier this week displayed a video of Sheeran transitioning seamlessly between “Thinking Out Loud" and “Let’s Get it On" in a live performance, which they said amounted to a confession that he had ripped off the song.
But Sheeran told the court there was nothing unusual in that, because it is “quite simple to weave in and out of songs" that are in the same key.
He appeared self-deprecating as he told of his background in music, saying: “I can’t read music. I’m not classically trained in anything."
He also told the packed courtroom: “I’m not the world’s most talented guitar player."
The trial resumes on Monday.
The latest trial comes a year after Sheeran was cleared at a trial in London of claims he copied parts of his hit song Shape Of You.
