Ed Sheeran is currently in the middle of a plagiarism court case, as songwriters Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue accuse Sheeran of using elements of their 2015 single “Oh Why” (which Chokri released as Sami Switch) in his own “Shape Of You,” specifically the “oh I, oh I, oh I” hook. Sheeran took the stand yesterday and as part of his defense, he sang bits of songs by Nina Simone and Blackstreet.
BBC reports Sheeran wanted to illustrate how the “Shape Of You” melody is common in pop music, so he made his point by singing parts of Simone’s “Feeling Good” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity.”
“If you put them all in the same key, they’ll sound the same,” he said.
Furthermore, Sheeran denied having heard “Oh Why” before writing “Shape Of You” in October 2016 and rejected the idea that friends may have played it for him. Regardless, due to the legal battle, Sheeran’s royalties from the song (estimated at about £20 million, or around $26 million) have been frozen since Chokri Ross O’Donoghue made their copyright infringement claim in 2018.
Elsewhere, Sheeran “briefly became irritated” when a portion of an unreleased song of his was mistakenly played in court. He looked at his lawyers and asked, “That’s a song I wrote last January. How did you get that? I want to know how you got that.” He was told some of the music played in court was coming from “Shape Of You” co-writer Steve Mac’s laptop and that the wrong file was accidentally played.
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.