According to Variety, Ed Sheeran had some harsh words for a musicologist on Monday (U.S. East Coast Time), which was the second week of the court hearing about similarities between his hit song “Thinking Out Loud” and Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On.”
I think what he is doing is criminal,
Ed Sheeran said that Gaye’s estate had hired a musicologist named Alexander Stewart as an expert witness, the New York Times reported.
I don’t know why he’s allowed to be an expert.
Sheeran, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Publishing are being sued by three of the heirs of Ed Townsend, who wrote the 1973 song with Marvin Gaye and is listed as a co-writer on the song’s credits.
As he did last week, Ed Sheeran played his guitar to refute Stewart’s testimony, in which he said that one of the chords Sheeran plays at the beginning of “Thinking Out Loud” is similar to the minor one that appears at the same point throughout “Let’s Get It On.”
Variety says that on Thursday, Ed Sheeran played a major chord that he has played at that point in “every single gig” and then the minor chord that Stewart talked about.
It works very, very well for him,
Sheeran said,
but it’s not the truth.
Sheeran went back to the stand on Monday. One of his lawyers, Ilene S. Farkas, asked him questions, and he showed that he can easily switch between parts of his own songs and parts of songs by Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Bill Withers, Blackstreet, and Van Morrison. He said that Stewart had lied about the melodies and meanings of his songs.
