Ed Sheeran recently won a plagiarism lawsuit against him for his hit song ‘Shape of You’ and the singer says it affected the way he approaches songwriting.
While appearing on BBC2’s Newsnight with writing partner Johnny McDaid, Sheeran talked about his first plagiarism lawsuit for “Photograph” and how he regretted settling the case. “I didn’t play Photograph for ages after that… I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty,” he revealed.
Now Ed says he records his songwriting sessions to prevent similar cases from being brought in the future.
He explained: “We’ve had claims come through on songs and we go, ‘Well here’s the footage and you watch, and you’ll see that there’s nothing there’.”
Ed said it’s also changed his approach to songwriting. “I personally think the best feeling in the world is the euphoria around the first idea of writing a great song. That feeling has now turned into, ‘Oh wait, let’s stand back for a minute’.”
He continued: “You find yourself, in the moment, second-guessing yourself.”
Speaking about the most recent case for “Shape of You,” he said: “I’m happy it’s over. I’m happy we can move on and get back to writing songs. Lawsuits are not fun for anyone involved. And yeah, I think across all sides it was not a nice experience.”
He went on to say that win or lose “we had to stand up for what we thought was right.”
"I didn't play Photograph for ages after that… I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty."
— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) April 8, 2022
Ed Sheeran tells #Newsnight he regrets settling a previous multi-million pound copyright dispute as it opened the floodgates to other claimshttps://t.co/MNvpv3ejzY pic.twitter.com/dxwjurfHfn
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