Since misery loves company, we’re sure Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams are loving this news. And they should because what this dude did is more apparent/blatant than what they got busted for. At least in the opinion of a lot of folks.
Basically it’s like this. Musician/singer Ed Sheeran just got fitted for a suit. A lawsuit, that is ’cause he’s been accused of ripping off Marvin Gaye‘s classic song “Let’s Get it On” for his mega-hit “Thinking Out Loud,” according to papers filed in New York federal court.
The track, which became the first to spend a year in the UK top 40 and has been streamed more than 1 billion times on YouTube, became Sheeran’s first number one single, and went on to top charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and South Africa. On top of that, it also won song of the year at the 2016 Grammy awards, notes The Guardian.
Heirs of songwriter Ed Townsend, the co-writer of “Let’s Get It On,” claim in their suit that Sheeran and others basically “copied the “heart” of the Marvin Gaye hit and repeated it continuously throughout “Thinking Out Loud.”
“‘Thinking’ is not the product of independent creation,” Townsend’s heirs point out in a request for a jury trial.
Both artists are deceased, however Gaye’s family managed to win an infringement suit last year featuring the late singer’s “Got To Give It Up.”
As we reported, a jury decided that Thicke and Williams took enough of “Give It Up” for their “Blurred Lines” hit in 2013, that Gaye’s family deserved a $7.3 million award. However, the amount was later reduced to $3.2 million by a federal judge.
As of this posting, Sheeran’s camp has yet to respond to the lawsuit.
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