Ed Sheeran testifies in court, singing a snippet of ‘Thinking Out Loud’

Sheeran is accused by the estate of Marvin Gaye’s co-writer, Ed Townsend, for using the late music legend’s 1973 tune ‘Let’s Get it On’ for his song ‘Thinking Out Loud’. Ed Sheeran played the chord progression to his hit song Thinking Out Loud and sang on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court on Thursday.

‘Thinking Out Loud’ won a 2016 Grammy Award.

Sheeran performs for the jury

Sheeran performed a bit of what he said was the first version of ‘Thinking Out Loud,’ as he and co-writer Amy Wadge developed it together at his home in England.

The song’s hook lyric was then — as he sang it — “I’m singing out now,” according to musical testimony reported by ABC News. “When I write vocal melodies, it’s like phonetics,” he testified, according to Reuters’ report, showing how ‘singing out now’ became ‘thinking out loud’.

Mr. Sheeran used part of his appearance on Thursday to rebut an assertion by Alexander Stewart, a musicologist serving as an expert witness for the plaintiffs. Both ‘Thinking Out Loud’ and ‘Let’s Get It On’ revolve around a nearly identical four-chord pattern.

Mr. Stewart argued that for the first 24 seconds of “Thinking Out Loud,” when Mr. Sheeran plays the second chord in the sequence, it is similar to the minor one that appears in the same position of the progression throughout “Let’s Get It On.”

Sheeran’s testimony going back to the beginning

But Mr. Sheeran denied that he played that chord, and in court demonstrated it both ways — first the major version he said he has played at “every single gig,” and then, with a slight grimace, the minor one that Mr. Stewart suggested.

“It works very, very well for him,” Mr. Sheeran said, “but it’s not the truth.”

Mr. Sheeran testified for nearly an hour on Thursday, with most of that time devoted to recounting his career trajectory from hardscrabble teenage beginnings to global stardom.

He left school at 17 to concentrate on music and played every pub open-mic night in London that he could. “I would play anywhere that would have me,” Mr. Sheeran testified.

At the same time, he said, he was developing as a songwriter. Then as now, he has preferred to work fast, saying that most of his songs are written in a day, or even a matter of minutes. He has written as many as eight or nine songs a day, he said.

“I draw inspiration a lot from people in my own life,” Mr. Sheeran testified.

The singer is expected to return to the stand when the trial resumes on Monday.