Report by Brad Balfour
When I heard about the Ed Sheeran pop-up store that appeared earlier this month, I decided to check it out on Wooster Street in Soho. It was a modest affair with a car stuffed with straw in front of the entrance. Hailing the release of “Subtract,” the shop offered backdrops related to the album which made for a good selfie and various Instagram posts. There were signed CD copies and projections of lyrics displayed on the wall while the songs played throughout. Some of his drawings were on the wall as well. By going there, it gave me the chance to learn something about this star from England with strong Irish roots a solid thatch of ginger hair. His fans seemed reverent but not fanatic.
The store was a celebration of all things which concern Edward Christopher Sheeran as an artist. Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England on February 17th, 1991, baby Sheeran was imbued with artistic inclinations right from the start. His father was a curator at Cartwright Hall in Bradford and his mother worked at Manchester City Art Gallery.
Nonetheless, for megastar Sheeran, it’s been the best of times and the worst of times over the past few months. While recently releasing his next mega-hit album, “Subtract,” he also had to handle a career-threatening plagiarism suit. And it wasn’t the first such suit in his stint as an international star.
Despite his successes, the British pop personality has been having a tough time. Though it’s hard to feel sorry for him with his string of successful albums and tours, he sure has racked up a lot of conflicting experiences in a relatively short life.
Given his mega hit status, he has expressed his share of ambivalence about fame and some of the cliches imposed on him as the sugary-voiced, red-haired, leprechaun-like music making machine. That sweetness has been reflected in this pop superstar’s songs and lyrics, but the music and lyrics of “Subtract” actually deal out to his fanbase tunes themes of death and depression.
It’s not the sweet, vulnerable fare of such tunes as “Thinking Out Loud” — which prompted the suit that recently grabbed headlines. Sheeran got more press than any tour announcement or album release event could ever generate. But it wasn’t for the project itself; he garnered it as a defendant in a new copyright infringement trial that, after eight years since the lawsuit was filed, coincidentally ended on the very day before the release of his new record.
Sheeran’s wife Cherry Seaborn was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor while pregnant with their second daughter, a condition that caused a delay in the treatment that otherwise would have begun immediately. She’s survived and continues to be a particularly profound part of the Sheeran narrative.
The singer lost one of his best friends and earliest champions, Jamal Edwards, who succumbed to a heart attack at 31. Ironically, the singer/songwriter had a minor hit about six months before with a song about death called “Visiting Hours.”
And while all this was happening during February 2022, his four-part Disney+ docuseries, “The Sum of It All,” was airing. It told the tale of the British superstar and offered his life reflections at that point in time.
Looking back across the years, Sheeran’s legal issues had almost forced him to contemplate ending his public career. In 2017, he settled out of court over claims that his song “Photograph” was a “note-for-note” copy of the chorus in “Amazing” by X Factor UK winner Matt Cardle. Sheeran later regretted settling, saying that it had been done on the advice of lawyers who considered the case “more trouble than it was worth.” But it wasn’t because of the money involved — battling over the song changed his relationship with it. He said: “I didn’t play ‘Photograph’ for ages after that. I just stopped playing it. I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty.”
Settling that case opened a floodgate of claims, including the “Shape of You” lawsuit. In 2018, legal action was brought against Sheeran, Sony/ATV Music Publishing and Atlantic Records by the estate and heirs of the late producer Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the song “Let’s Get It On” with Marvin Gaye.
US District Judge Louis Stanton rejected Sheeran’s 2019 call for dismissal of the legal case accusing him of copying parts of the song in “Thinking Out Loud.” The judge said that a jury should decide whether they found “substantial similarities between several of the two works’ musical elements” — or not. A previous case by Townsend’s estate was dismissed without prejudice in February 2017.
Sheeran was also taken to court in March 2022 for another copyright suit over “Shape of You.” Musicians Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue alleged that the song infringed “particular lines and phrases” of their 2015 composition, “Oh Why.” Sheeran won that case, with Justice Zacaroli ruling that he “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from “Oh Why” when writing “Shape of You.”
Closely watched by those in music and legal circles, the second case went to trial in New York during April 2023. Sheeran even performed live in order to defend himself. His lawyers argued that while the two songs have similar “building blocks” and a specific chord progression, such features are true for many pop songs. The jury agreed and found in Sheeran’s favor with a unanimous verdict. After winning, Sheeran commented: “These chords are common building blocks which were used to create music long before ‘Let’s Get It On’ was written and will be used to create music long after we are all gone.”
More than anything he has done or that has happened to him lately, Sheeran deserves credit for bringing the huge debate about creativity into focus — when does someone go from being an influence to becoming a source for copying? Where is the dividing line between being inspired and becoming a plagarizer?
Having been a deejay, I know that the audible connection between one song to the next is essential for a mix. But does that mean that one song is imitating the other so that they can be seamlessly blended together? I don’t want to be the one to offer a conclusive answer, but I’ll support creative freedom in any case.
As he lurches into his 30s, the real creative conflict for this popstar is how will his career evolve from this point forward. Will he make further forays into other media? More pop-up stores? Maybe a show of his paintings is next?