After winning the copyright case over “Shape of You,” Ed Sheeran says from now on, he’s filming his songwriting sessions to protect himself against similar claims in the future.
A judge ruled that Ed and his collaborators Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac had not plagiarized a song called “Oh Why,” by Sami Chokri, when they wrote “Shape of You.”
Speaking to BBC’s Newsnight, Ed said, “Now I just film everything, everything is on film. We’ve had claims coming through on the songs and we go, ‘Well here’s the footage and you watch. You’ll see there’s nothing there."”
Ed also revealed that he now regrets settling a copyright claim over his song “Photograph” out of court in 2017. He said after did that, “the floodgates opened” and he was hit with other claims.
Not only that, Ed admits, “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.”
In addition, Ed feels his songwriting process has been tainted. Referring to a story about late Beatle George Harrision being “scared to touch the piano because he might be touching someone else’s note,” Ed explained, “There is definitely a feeling of that in the studio.”
“I personally think the best feeling in the world is the euphoria around the first idea of writing a great song,” he continued. “That feeling has now turned into ‘Oh, wait, let’s stand back for a minute.’ You find yourself in the moment, second-guessing yourself.
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