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Its #IPThursday again guys! This week’s story is easy, no tricky legal question, its are these two songs similar to each other. Its Ed Sheeran vs TLC and then again, vs Marvin Gaye.
Meet Ed Sheeran, the star our story today. Born on 17 February 1991 in England. Ed is one of the greatest singers to ever come out of the UK and he is one of the best selling artists at the moment. He really just looks the IT guy at your company not best selling singer!
He rose to fame with his single The A Team in 2011 and since then he’s released hits and won numerous awards. In 2019, he was recognised as the best performing UK artist between 2010 and 2019.
For all intents and purpose, Ed seems like a cool guy with no controversy. He just shows up, sings, plays his guitar and leaves. However, with great success, often comes great litigation and he has been on the receiving end of lawsuits during his rise to fame.
And today, we’re gonna take a look at the shorter of the two cases that have found him at the centre of an IP storm.
In 2017, Ed recorded and released the song “Shape of You”. It is a catchy up-tempo tune that Sheeran released. Its actually not really his style and its no surprise that his team had initially written it for Rihanna. However, after a while they decided to keep it with Sheeran.
It was the best selling song of 2017 and it was the most streamed song of the decade on Spotify. It had 2.4 billion streams by 2019 and even won Sheeran a grammy award. Thats how big and brilliant it was.
Soon after its release however, the song was again trending on social media but for different reasons this time......
Fans pointed out that it sounded similar to another song, the 90s hit single”No Scrubs” by the girl group TLC. I know Huge Surprise!
This is the part of the thread where I compare the songs. Basically, fans of TLC argued that the melody of “Shape of You” was similar to “No Scrubs”. I personally couldn’t disagree more. I felt the songs were different. Its difficult to explain where and how they are similar.
Sheeran probably didnt want any of that twitter smoke, and he quickly agreed to give part of the songwriting credits to TLC. No court drama, case settled. I’d have taken my chances in court for this one but I’d love to hear your thoughts! Especially if you think they are similar.
The following year in 2018, Sheeran found himself within another Copyright fight. This time from the estate of Marvin Gaye and that of his producer Ed Townsend.
We all know “Marvin, he was this friend of mine, and he could sing a song, his heart in every line.” Surely everyone sang those lyrics out? For those who don’t know, its the opening lyric to the song “Nightshift” by The Commodores. A dedication to Marvin Gaye.
After releasing the album “Whats going on?” in 1971, Marvin experienced certain issues and he struggled to write music during that time. He’d renewed his contract with Motown but he wasn’t really inspired. This was until 1973...
Marvin, together with his label mate at Motown Ed Townsend decided to write a song about “getting on with life”. You know, because life is difficult and you just need to get on with it, right? It was a political/religious song and it was to be called “Lets get it on”.
When Townsend heard the recording, he thought it would be better if it was more romantic as opposed to political. Townsend said the song should be “about making sweet love." Yea definitely a “mlava” 
At the time, Marvin’s future girlfriend was in the studio and some say thats where he got the inspiration for the lyrics. Makes sense, that first line says everything. “I’ve beeen really trying baby, tryna hold back this feeling for so long.” Long story short: They dated after!
Anyways, the song was a hit and today it remains one of Motown’s most successful records. It has been used in countless movies and I’m sure a lot of you were conceived to it. Its a proper jam 
Before “Netflix and Chill” I’m sure you’d send your bae a Marvin Gaye record. Fun exercise, what song do you reckon you were conceived to? 
Sidenote: I really need to remember that my parents read these threads.
Lets get it on is probably Marvin’s most successful song after Sexual Healing which came 10 years later. Both songs have been sampled a lot throughout the years.
So how does this tie into our story. Well, in 2016 Sheeran released the song “Thinking out loud”, and it is one of the best love songs I’ve ever heard. It is also one of his most successful tunes.
However, after its release the families of Marvin Gaye and Ed Townsend noticed that the song was similar to “Lets Get It On”.
Townsend’s family then decided to sue Ed Sheeran. They said that the melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic compositions of 'Thinking' are substantially and/or strikingly similar to the drum composition of “Let's Get It On”.
Sheeran probably felt that this was a reach and this matter actually went to a court in the US (I think). The court had to decide if the songs were similar.
Now when you listen to the songs first time, you wouldn’t think they are similar. But if you listen to the instrumentals alone, then you can pick up the similarities. And I think this is much closer to Shape Of You vs No Scrubs.
The judge threw the matter out, probably on the basis that there was no infringement here.
Two years later, in June 2018, Sheeran was again sued for the same song, this time for $100 million in damages by Structured Asset Sales. Again Sheeran was dragged to court.
Structured Asset Sales own one-third of the copyright to "Let's Get It On". Remember last week we said Masters are valuable assets. I think this case is still ongoing and it’ll be interesting to see how it ends.
In my view, these songs are actually similar. I’ve listened to Thinking out loud a lot and imagined someone’s daughter serenading me with it. Then I did the same with “Lets Get It On” and although vocals are different, the underlying melody is similar.
Maybe you guys have a different view.
Big Lesson: Unless he was actually guilty of sampling, Ed should have fought harder against TLC. At times, your chances are better in court. Social media anger dies down. But if he did sample, its important to acknowledge, lawsuits are never too far!
Correction: Think out loud was 2014 not 16, time flies.
