() — Musician Ed Sheeran played guitar and sang on the stand Thursday as part of his testimony in a copyright infringement lawsuit over whether his single “Thinking Out Loud” copied Marvin Gaye’s classic song “Let’s Get It On.” .
Sheeran performed the first line of “Thinking Out Loud” in an attempt to rebut the testimony of the plaintiff’s expert witness, Alexander Stewart.
Stewart is a music expert named by the plaintiffs. On Wednesday, Stewart claimed that the chords Sheeran played in the first 24 seconds of the song were “virtually identical” to “Let’s Get It On.”
Sheeran denied playing the chords the way Stewart described, and played both versions to show the difference.
Ed Sheeran testifies that he “would have been an idiot” to perform a song copied from “Let’s Get It On”
“It helps his argument, obviously,” Sheeran said. “It works very, very, well for him, but it’s not the truth.”
Sheeran was briefly called to testify Tuesday by attorney Keisha Rice, who represents the estate of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the song “Let’s Get it on” with Marvin Gaye.
During his earlier testimony, the musician said that the idea to create the medley was “probably mine.” He said that if he had in fact copied “Let’s Get It On”, then he “would have been an idiot to stand on stage in front of 20,000 people”.
Defense attorneys did not question Sheeran on Tuesday.
Sheeran is accused of copying “Let’s Get It On” by the estate of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 hit with Gaye. Townsend’s daughter, Kathryn Townsend Griffin, sister Helen McDonald and the estate fund of his ex-wife, Cherrigale Townsend, are the named plaintiffs in the “Thinking Out Loud” case. Gaye died in 1984 and Townsend died in 2003.
Sheeran’s legal team argued throughout the week that the sounds used in both songs are common in pop music.
In his opening statement on Tuesday, Townsend’s lawyer, Ben Crump, noted that Sheeran played his ballad and Gaye’s song in a medley during a concert, calling the moment a “smoking gun.”
