The Pop Corporation

Ed Sheeran has said that he might knock the whole music thing on the head if he loses his case in a copyright infringement trial. Are we going to joke about this? Of course we are, because partly, it’s funny in a lowest common denominator way. However, there’s a serious point in all of this too, which is much less funny.

Get a gal who can do both, eh?

If you’ve missed the news, the popstar is in court because of plagiarism. The song in question is his ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and the song it’s up against is ‘Let’s Get It On’. The person doing the suing is Ed Townsend who is one of the co-writers on the Marvin Gaye track. It all hinges on the four-chord sequence in the track, and the rhythm of it.

Now, the idea that chords and rhythm are sacrosanct is a troubling one. Every rock ‘n’ roll song and boogie woogie number for starters. Any jangle pop using G/C/D and a Brydsian beat have had it. Anything bluesy, Motowny, a lot of funk, disco, house… while you may think ‘well, just write more original songs’, fact is, 50% of your record collection sounds an awful lot like the other 50% of it.

Team Let’s Get It On think they have a smoking gun with Sheeran doing a medley of his track with the Marvin Gaye track – they see this very much as something of a confession. Sheeran, rightly, bristled at the notion, pointing out that this applies to a million songs, saying: “Most pop songs can fit over most pop songs… you could go from Let it Be to No Woman, No Cry and switch back.”

Sheeran and his songwriting partner said that they were thinking more along the lines of Van Morrison in vibe, and without ’60s soul music, where would Van the Man be? Van Morrison who in turn influenced The Staple Singers’ ’70s output. You see, it’s troubling to think of someone being able to own common musical elements of pop music isn’t it? If someone said the chords of E/A/B/D belonged to them with a shuffle beat underneath, then the whole of the 1950s suing each other, pointlessly.

All the good chords have been used up. All the familiar rhythms what we’ve decided we like best are in the public domain. And yet, here we are, with yet another lawsuit over a Marvin Gaye track, the last one being the Blurred Lines/Got To Give It Up ruckus.

We do see a better attitude elsewhere. Look at the Olivia Rodrigo spat, where her song ‘Good 4 U’ was accused of aping Paramore and her song ‘Brutal’ which reminded people of Elvis Costello, the latter saying: “This is fine by me. It’s how rock & roll works. You take the broken pieces of another thrill and make a brand new toy. That’s what I did.” Costello himself acknowledged the influence of Subterranean Homesick Blues which inspired Pump It Up.

Sheeran added, with regards to the possibility of a successful suing: “If that happens, I’m done, I’m stopping. I find it really insulting to devote my whole life to being a performer and a songwriter and have someone diminish it.”

SO SOME GOOD MIGHT COME OUT OF THIS WHOLE SORRY MESS, EH? LOLOLOLOL.

Anyway, this kind of thing won’t go away. From The Air That I Breathe and Creep, from the The Stranglers and Elastica, Oasis and The New Seekers, Zep and Spirit, George Harrison and The Chiffons, people trying to stake a claim to chord patterns are always going to be a thing and, usually, it’s not the artists themselves, but greedy estates.

Back in the Blurred Lines case, over 200 artists signed an open letter warning that these rulings could have terrible knock-on effects: “The verdict in this case threatens to punish songwriters for creating new music that is inspired by prior works. All music shares inspiration from prior musical works, especially within a particular musical genre. By eliminating any meaningful standard for drawing the line between permissible inspiration and unlawful copying, the judgment is certain to stifle creativity and impede the creative process.”

And then we end up with ridiculous suits like the one of Steve Ronsen, who once had a song called ‘Almost’ on Soundcloud. It had 300 listens on Soundcloud and then he tried to go after Lady GaGa over a three note run in ‘Shallow’ – the idea that a megastar is scouring the internet and lifting three notes from an unheard singer is preposterous, but it shows how pointless these things are. And who the fuck is Steve Ronsen? Especially when the notes in question were literally Do-Re-Mi.

It feels like, thanks in part to all music being available online now, there’s a notion that anyone could indeed hear anyone else’s song, and with that, comes something of a gold-rush. It’s the awfulness of various broken legal systems, the hopes of quick payouts and frivolity. We hope this corrects itself at some point, and those estates looking to protect legacy music might seem a bit more sincere if they weren’t allowing their music to be used in cheap advertisements and the whole thing wasn’t just about getting paid.