Even Ed Sheeran’s own expert witness couldn’t help gushing about the bluesy beauty of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On,” a song by the pop artist Accused of stealing songs.
“Those blue notes are gorgeous,” defense musicologist Lawrence Ferrara told a federal jury in Manhattan on Tuesday, the fifth-day Hilance fought a civil plagiarism lawsuit claiming his 2014 hit “Thinking Out Loud” ’ ripped out the 1973 soul classic.
“I love ’em,” says Ferrara, leaning on each bluesy flat note as he sits at the keyboard in front of the courtroom, picking the opening lines of “Let’s Get It On”—”I’ve been trying, baby.
“Let’s Get It On,” co-composer Ed Townsend said in their lawsuit that Sheeran’s power ballad stole the soul masterpiece’s four-chord progression and the general shape of parts of the melody, including its opening line.
But the opening track to “Thinking Out Loud” doesn’t have that blues feel, nor does it have a flat or “blue” note, Ferrara testified Tuesday, also playing that melody to prove it.
“They were very different,” he told jurors.
Sheeran’s side is wrapping up his defense in a plagiarism trial that featured dueling musicologists, multiple audio and video tracks played loudly, and enough exemplary singing, guitar and keyboard performances that the trial could have its own record.
The music played on the witness stand in Ed Sheeran’s plagiarism trial
Sheeran spent four days testifying, acoustic guitar in hand , demonstrating the stark difference between what his side said was “think out loud” and “let’s get started.”
Sheeran appeared to lose patience on multiple occasions on Monday , including when he told jurors that the opposing musicologist deliberately mislabeled the chords he played on “Thinking Aloud” to make the two songs look more similar than they are.
“I was playing the chords,” Sheeran insisted, his voice rising in a combative cross-examination. “Obviously I’d know better.”
The biggest controversy is that a series of four chords – called a “chord progression” – repeats in both songs using the same unique rhythm.
In fact, especially when interpreted by a Townsend musicologist, the progression sounds pretty much the same.
But Sheeran’s experts said Tuesday that the controversial progression — known in musician parlance as the I, iii, IV, V progression — is ubiquitous in popular music.
It’s taught as the basic “rock-folk chord progression” in countless beginner guitar books, expert Ferrara told jurors.
“How many songs did you find that used the same chord progression?” Sheeran’s lawyer, Ilene Farkas, asked Ferrara. “Eighty,” all written before “Think Aloud,” he replied.
“How many of them were written before ‘Let’s get started?'” she asked. “Thirty-three,” he replied.
These include “If I Have A Hammer” by Pete Seeger, “Cruel To Be Kind” by Nick Lowe, “I Started a Joke” by the Bee Gees, “Fun, Fun, Fun” by the Beach Boys and “Ziggie Stardust” by David Bowie “.
All of those songs, and many more, were released before 1973 and used the same progression, Ferrara told jurors.
“Obviously, ‘Let’s Get It On’ is not the first song to use this chord progression,” Ferrara told jurors.
When writing “Let’s Get It On,” Townsend didn’t steal from earlier songs, which also used I, iii, IV, V, Ferrara testified, just as Sheeran didn’t steal.
“He just wrote a song with a common progression, like every other professional songwriter,” Ferrara said of Townsend.
Then there is the rhythm of the chord playing, the so-called “harmonic rhythm”.
Two opposing musicologists agree that “Let’s Get It On” and “Thinking Out Loud” share a harmonious rhythm. Both use four-chord progressions, where the second and fourth chords are “anticipated,” meaning played not on the beat, but before the beat.
That harmonic rhythm was also “commonplace,” Ferrara testified Tuesday, showing jurors a series of sheet music for other songs that used the exact same harmonic rhythm.
As the score flashed across the overhead screen, Ferrara played the chords of the song on his keyboards—first James Taylor’s “Lo and Behold,” than Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” then It was Tom Petty’s “Learning to Fly” and then Toby Keith’s “Should Be a Cowboy”.
“A small sample,” Ferrara called it, “of a four-chord progression in which the second and fourth chords are expected.
Sheeran has used the same pattern in at least ten songs he has written by himself or with others, Ferrara said.
“It’s clearly an important part of Ed Sheeran’s vocabulary,” the expert told jurors. “It’s part of his toolbox.
Testimony is expected to continue on Wednesday.