After winning a plagiarism suit in relation to his song “Shape Of You” on Wednesday, singer Ed Sheeran shares that for years now he’s filmed his entire recording process for his album just to fend off any other claims.
“Now I just film everything, everything is on film,” Sheeran tells BBC.
“We’ve had claims come through on the songs and we go, well here’s the footage and you watch. You’ll see there’s nothing there,” he adds.
High Court Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled in favor of Sheeran this week, saying he “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from the 2015 song “Oh Why” by Sami Chokri, despite any so-called “indisputable similarity between the works.”
“It is so painful to hear someone publicly and aggressively challenge your integrity,’’ Sheeran, Snow Patrol’s John McDaid, and producer Steven McCutcheon said following the ruling. “It is so painful to have to defend yourself against accusations that you have done something that you haven’t done, and would never do.’’
This is far from the first lawsuit leveled at Sheeran, as the singer settled one back in 2014 concerning his song “Photograph.” In the same interview with BBC, Sheeran says he stopped playing the song for a while, and “personally” regrets not fighting the suit. It was shortly after this he started recording his song-writing process.
“I just stopped playing it,” he says. “I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty.”
Listen, we’d probably start recording our every creative move if we were getting slammed with copyright lawsuits on the regular. (Or we’d simply write better music.) On the bright side for the singer, when there’s an inevitable documentary made about one of the biggest names in modern music, there will be plenty behind the scenes footage available.