In a packed New York courtroom on Thursday, Ed Sheeran sang a few lyrics from one of his songs and played a few chords on a guitar, with a jury deciding whether the song violates the copyrights of Marvin Gaye’s soul classic Let’s Get It On.

Sheeran’s lawyer, Ilene Farkas, pressed him an hour into his testimony in Manhattan federal court to explain how he came to write Thinking Out Loud a decade ago.

He reached back and took his guitar from a rack behind the witness stand, explaining that writing songs came naturally to him.

He claimed that he could write up to nine songs in a day using his own version of phonetics. Sheeran claimed to have written ten songs over the weekend.

Then he sang just a few words of the pivotal song, bringing smiles to the faces of some of the spectators in Judge Louis L Stanton’s courtroom.

“I’m singing out loud,” he said, loud enough to be heard but not loud enough to disturb the court.

He spoke a few words after he finished singing them, saying “and then words fall in” as he attempted to teach the jury his method of creating music. He stated that he worked on the song with Amy Wadge, who wrote the opening chords.

Despite having performed with some of the world’s greatest artists and becoming a regular at music award shows by the age of 32, he admitted from the witness stand, his chair tilted towards the jury, that “I’m not the world’s most talented guitar player.”

When he bumped his hand against the witness stand microphone, he quickly apologised.

Then he launched into the song, which according to the heirs of Ed Townsend, Gaye’s co-writer on Let’s Get It On, has “striking similarities” and “over common elements” with the famed 1973 Gaye musical treasure.

“When your legs don’t work like they used to,” he sang solemnly, as if he was about to delve deeper into the song. After only a few bars, he abruptly placed the guitar back in the rack behind him as his lawyer informed the judge that this was an appropriate location to adjourn for the week.

Two days earlier, he had been called to testify by plaintiffs’ attorneys and was adamant in telling jurors that he and Ms Wadge wrote the song without stealing anyone else’s music.

He also stated that a video showing him segueing on stage between Thinking Out Loud and Let’s Get It On was not unusual, adding that it is “quite simple to weave in and out of songs” in the same key.

On Thursday, his lawyer asked Sheeran friendly questions, such as how he became interested in music after joining a church choir with his mother when he was four years old.

Sheeran appeared to be mocking himself as he told his story, saying, “I can’t read music.” “I have no classical training in anything.”

He said he dropped out of school at 17 so he could perform up to three times a night, anywhere that would have him, from bingo halls to restaurants to “anywhere nobody was”.

Within a decade, he was performing with everyone from Taylor Swift to the Rolling Stones, 50 Cent to Eric Clapton.

He soon found himself writing eight or nine songs a day, explaining that “when inspiration hits, you get excited and it just comes out.”

Sheeran’s lawyer asked him near the end of his testimony why an expert called by the plaintiffs tried to show how chords in Thinking Out Loud resemble Let’s Get It On.

“He was saying that because it helps his argument,” Sheeran explained.

The trial is set to resume on Monday.

Info source – LBC