6 Ed Sheeran Songs That 'Rip Off' Other Artists

this video is sponsored by indie rock band slightly killed no music is truly original it's basically next to impossible to not be at least in part inspired by the music that came before you so therefore pretty much every song you ever hear is borrowing at least in part from the music that came before it however sometimes this influence begins to veer into the territory of plagiarism and one songwriter who is perhaps a bit too liberal with his borrowing is ed sheeran when you say pop song lawsuit ed sheeran is perhaps one of the first artists that springs to mind perhaps sheeran's most audacious act of plagiarism is his 2014 song photograph the chorus of photograph clearly and undeniably lifts its entire melody from matt cardell's amazing so you can keep me inside the pocket of your ripped jeans [Music] [Music] somehow this isn't helped at all by the fact that both songs use the exact same chord progression and style as you can imagine this blatant plagiarism led to a lawsuit in 2016 and in 2017 the case was settled out of court however sometimes when sharon is accused of plagiarism the allegations are slightly more dubious for example in 2016 a lawsuit was filed that claimed that sheeran's 2014 hit thinking out loud had plagiarized marvin gaye's 1973 song let's get it on these two songs do certainly sound alike they both not only use a near identical chord progression but they both play this progression with the exact same rhythm [Music] himself was actually perhaps one of the first people to notice the similarity when he actually med lead the two songs together for live shows in 2014 [Applause] however even if these two songs do use the same chord progression and the same rhythm that doesn't necessarily mean that sheeran has plagiarized marvin gaye borrowing chords and rhythms from other songs is not generally considered to be plagiarism because these are essential building blocks of music much like shapes and colors are to painting the chord progression from let's get it on is far from a rare progression anyway [Music] the melody of a song is ultimately the one element that can distinguish it from other songs and therefore it's the melody that should be considered most closely when you're judging whether two songs are similar or not in the case of thinking out loud and let's get it on the two melodies have some similarities but ultimately the two melodies are different distinct and unique as of 2020 the legal battle surrounding these two songs continues however in my opinion it's pretty clear that ed sheeran is well within his rights to use this chord progression and this rhythm let's get it on is hardly the first song to use these elements and it won't be the last in 2016 ed sheeran had a songwriting session with producer steve mack and songwriter johnny mcdade and in this session they managed to write three hit records shape of you strip that down and the rest of our life all three of these hits plagiarize other artists let's start with shape of you the chorus hook of shape of you borrows from teosi's song no scraps shiron not only admits that he lifted from no scrubs here but he says it was a completely intentional decision because as we were writing it i kind of knew i wanted it to be like a really sort of r b type feel and i was like wouldn't it be cool if like we put like an interpolation and no scrubs in it so the um the bit that went girl you know i want your love originally with girl you know i want your love as you can imagine the writers of no scrubs are credited on shape of you however another artist who believes that they too should be credited on shape of you is sami switch switch claims that this segment of shape of you is lifted from his song oh why the two melodies are certainly similar and both use similar lyrics however i would say it's hard to judge whether this segment of melody is distinctive enough to claim ownership over melodically the short hook is a typical climb up the minor pentatonic scale and the lyric is about as generic as you can get let's move on to the second song strip that down which sheeran wrote for x1 directioner liam payne clearly burrows from it wasn't me by [Music] shaggy the songwriters of it wasn't me are credited as writers on sheeran's song however in an odd quirk of copyright because it wasn't me by shaggy samples an earlier song wars smile happy the writers of smile happy are also credited even though the element that was sampled doesn't actually appear in sheeran's song and the third song that sheeran and co wrote that day was the rest of our life which was recorded by faith hill and tim mcgraw the rest of our life lifts various elements from the song when i found you by australian country singer jasmine ray from the very first bar you can hear the blatant similarities this is the piano intro from the rest of our life [Music] and this is the piano intro from when i found you they are near identical the verse melody of both songs are also quite similar they may not be identical but both melodies have very similar phrasing rhythm and contour sitting with you in the dark [Music] today i held flowers and i dressed in white none of this is helped by the fact that both songs are in the same time signature in the same key in the same style and have very similar lyrical themes jasmine ray sean carey and bo golden the writers of when i found you were actually made aware of the similarities between the two songs when a fan tweeted about it they subsequently proceeded to raise a lawsuit and the case was settled later that year the details have not been disclosed however it appears that the writers of when i found you received an undisclosed sum of money in exchange for not receiving royalties or writing credit the last example we'll look at today is ed sheeran's song don't which clearly lifts from lucy pearl's 2000 hit don't mess with my man [Music] [Music] this once again appears to be a completely intentional sampling by sheeran like i said at the beginning all songwriters to varying degrees will borrow from previous songs sometimes intentionally and sometimes not but to ed sheeran it seems to be a core tool in his songwriting arsenal he seems to have no problems with borrowing from previous songs to build his own music and of course he has to sacrifice royalties for this and face legal issues however if it allows him to continue writing an endless stream of pop singles then perhaps it's worth it i'm sure there's other ed sheeran songs out there that featured plagiarism that i've not covered in this video so if you can think of any other examples then do put them in the comments down below and thank you to the sponsor of this video slightly killed slightly killed are an indie rock band from russia their sound is reminiscent of wolf alice but with an obvious influence from radiohead slightly killed have actually recorded at courtyard studios in the uk where radiohead recorded some of their early material and they also supported garbage in moscow back in 2016. have a listen to their song queen of the misfits and here's their latest single don't [Music] stop you can find slightly killed on streaming services like spotify or subscribe to their youtube channel that i've linked below thanks very much and as always a massive thank you goes to everybody who supports me on patreon including adam granger andrei science diazier andrew andrew brown andy deacon austin barrett austin russell bob mckinstry brittany parker bruce mount cameron all available chris cabell christopher ryan kieran bennen darren harvey d david lee fish david defunderfur dr darren wicks elena scorchenko espen hansen eugene leroy eyes fd hodor guillermo latona james kayo j.a cookensberger joe watson jonas soderstrom justin vigger lavender mint rose meg fellows melody composer squared michael vivian nancy gillard paul miller paul hazel peter dunphy roger clay sam lin steve daly thomas armstrong tim beaker tim payne toot vidad flowers and vladimir kodakov [Music] you

Channel: David Bennett Piano

Views: 230,526

Rating: 4.8401132 out of 5

Keywords: ed sheeran, comparison, stolen, steal, borrow, lawsuit, plagiarism, analysis, analysed, music theory, how, sheet music, explained, songwriting, credit, royalties, example, steve mac, johnny mcdaid

Id: _V4ktmwIFAw

Length: 11min 22sec (682 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/ibeatu85x]

Pretty common knowledge and applies to many, many popular artists. Honestly nearly any modern song written can be attributed to another older popular song.

[u/mittenciel]

Imagine if blues artists started suing each other for this nonsense.

[u/alweedman]

To be honest, it’s impossible to have a totally original melody or chord progression at this point. I think what makes a song stand out on its own would be the timbre of the various instruments and vocals in the track. As someone mentioned before, so much of the blues is damn near the same! It’s the players and the different sounds of all the parts at play that really matter and stick with the listener.

[u/qubitrenegade]

So the first example, Photograph and Amazing have:

• Different Keys
• Different notes within the keys
• Different patters within phrases
• Different Lyrics...

You can tell they're not the same because they're different when the screen changes... The notes move all around...

I mean, bar 1 of Amazing is C, D, C E, folowed by two half notes, followed by 8 8th notes... Photograph is half and an 8th rest (so already different amount of resting), E, E, F#, two half notes, not tied to the f# and then 8 8th notes... Is it because they both have two half notes and 8 8th notes that they are "the same"?

Am I taking crazy pills here? Sure, there are similarities, but this is about as "the same" as Dark Horse is to The Flame's bs tune...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ytoUuO-qvg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tpi4d3YM79Q

Edit: This video is making me angry... The I-V-vi-IV chord progression is so universally used it has it's own wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%E2%80%93V%E2%80%93vi%E2%80%93IV_progression

And then literally makes the argument about the next song "Well, everyone uses the same chord progressions"...

And sampling and giving credit is now somehow "Ripping off" other artists?

[u/Alarechercheduneame]

Media so desperate to tear every fucking person down. I don’t even listen to Ed Sheeran but this is such bullshit.