I'm no Ed Sheeran fan, but he's right: when it comes to musical plagiarism, guilt is in the ear of the listener

Leave Ed Sheeran alone. Four words I never expected to write, but we live in very strange times.
Cards on the table: I'm no fan of his music, but that's neither here nor there when it comes to making sense of the recently concluded epic battle over alleged copyright infringement. To catch you up to speed: on 20 June 2014, Sheeran released his second studio album X, a worldwide chart-topper. On 24 September 2014, he released the third single from it, Thinking Out Loud, a standard love song about vowing eternal devotion, which was another worldwide chart-topper. In between, that July, BBC Radio 1Xtra announced its Power List of the most important figures in black and urban music, which, to much derision, placed the very white Sheeran at the top. This was nothing new: Sheeran had already received four nominations for a Mobo Award. And, at least according to the owners of Marvin Gaye's 1973 bedroom ballad Let's Get It On, Thinking Out Loud was indeed music of black origin.
The family of Ed Townsend, Gaye's co-writer, launched a copyright infringement case in 2016, seeking $100m in damages. In 2023, a New York jury ruled in Sheeran's favour. However, a company called Structured Asset Sales, which owns a stake in Townsend's songwriting, launched a separate case in 2018. This week, that case, too, was rejected by the US supremecourt.
This comes as a particular relief to Amy Wadge, Sheeran's co-writer. Wadge is a true Welsh success story (she grew up in Somerset but cut her teeth on the grassroots Cardiff scene), and deserved better than a decade-long shadow over her first major hit.
There is the very vaguest similarity in the way Thinking Out Loud's syncopation drags its heels, the trick that gives Let's Get It On its sexiness. If anything, at the risk of precipitating another legal case, Thinking Out Loud reminds me more of Tracy Chapman's Baby Can I Hold You, and I'm not alone. (A YouTuber has created a mashup called Baby Can I Think Out Loud Tonight, and the two songs are also paired together on the SoundsJustLike website.)
This was not the first time a Marvin Gaye song has sparked a copyright case. In 2015, the Gaye estate successfully won a case against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams regarding their hit, Blurred Lines, not on the basis of melody or lyrics but, controversially, a similarity to the vibe and feel of Gaye's 1977 single Got To Give It Up. Nor is it the only time Sheeran has been the target of such a claim. His 2017 mega-hit Shape of You was targeted, unsuccessfully, by grime artist Sami Switch in 2022.
Anyone immersed in pop history can rattle off dozens of previous cases, fruitful or failed. Most famously of all, George Harrison paid out £587,000 due to his 1971 hit My Sweet Lord's strong resemblance to the Chiffons' He's So Fine. Sugar Hill Gang's epochal Rapper's Delight eventually gave a co-credit to Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, whose Good Times bassline it interpolates. Radiohead ceded a small percentage of the royalties for Creep to the composers of the Hollies' Air That I Breathe. When Jonathan King launched a media campaign accusing Pet Shop Boys of plagiarising Cat Stevens' Wild World, even recording a cover of Stevens' song in a PSB style, Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe turned the tables by successfully suing King, donating the proceeds to charity. (And that's before we even touch upon the countless samples-based cases.)
Whether or not a case has merit is a question for musicologists and lawyers to consider (and, in the case of Sheeran's Thinking Out Loud, they've answered it conclusively). But in the court of public opinion, guilt or innocence is in the ear of the listener.
We all enjoy spotting examples. Searching through my own social media, there are countless times I've observed: 'You never see (Song A) and (Song B) in the same room.' But we don't always enjoy having them pointed out to us. I remember being annoyed when my dad told me the Jam's Start! made generous use of the bassline from the Beatles' Taxman. And it isn't as if the Beatles were innocent of such things (look up Bobby Parker).
Ultimately, we are all hypocrites. How we react to alleged rip-offs depends on how fond we are of the alleged ripper-offer. If the Manics do it to Goldfrapp (Europa Geht Durch Mich), or Pulp to Laura Branigan (Disco 2000), or Suede to Judy Garland via Bowie (The Drowners), I might hail it as evidence of their taste, their cleverness and their adeptness at intertexual referentiality, or 'dialogic composition'. If Oasis do it to T Rex (Cigarettes and Alcohol), I cite it as proof of their oafish derivativeness.
Sometimes, the originator takes a magnanimous view. In 2013, it was alleged that One Direction's Best Song Ever bore a close resemblance to the Who's Baba O'Riley. Pete Townshend quickly distanced himself from the furore. 'The chords I used and the chords they used,' he wrote in a statement, 'are the same three chords we've all been using in basic pop music since Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Chuck Berry.' In 2021, Olivia Rodrigo was accused of lifting the riff of her single Brutal from Elvis Costello & the Attractions' 1978 classic Pump It Up. Costello was fine with the steal. 'It's how rock & roll works,' he tweeted. 'You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That's what I did.' In 2014, Sam Smith scored a major hit with Stay With Me, whose chorus was melodically similar to I Won't Back Down by Tom Petty. The latter and co-writer Jeff Lynne reached a 12.5% settlement with Smith and their team, and Petty bore no grudge. 'All my years of songwriting have shown me these things can happen,' he said. 'Most times, you catch it before it gets out the studio door, but in this case, it got by.'
This feels like the most enlightened approach. That's how the chain of influence functions, from generation to generation. The caveat being that there's sometimes a power dynamic at play, and it's often black artists who get shafted (it still leaves a sour taste that Led Zeppelin only gave co-writing credits to bluesmen such as Willie Dixon decades too late).
As the saying goes, where there's a hit there's a writ. 'I feel like claims like this are way too common now,' said Ed Sheeran after the Sami Switch case, adding: 'Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are being released every day on Spotify. That's 22m songs a year, and there's only 12 notes that are available.' Referring to the Gaye case, he said: 'I am not and will never allow myself to be a piggy bank for anyone to shake.'
Sheeran has a point. Claims of plagiarism too often stifle pop, and only result in lawyers getting richer. The message to plaintiffs, especially if they're faceless corporations, is simple: be less petty, and be more Petty.
Simon Price is a music journalist and author

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