Since I first saw it last year, I can’t stop rewatching that minute in Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary when Paul McCartney, noodling around on his guitar in front of a yawning George and Ringo, locates the chords and words to Get Back. Accounts of McCartney’s facility for melody – waking up with Yesterday in his head – have long been parables of the creative process, but seeing, in Jackson’s film, a song that all the world is about to know take form in real time is to witness something like a casual miracle.
Speaking to Newsnight on Friday, Ed Sheeran suggested that such footage may become a legal necessity. Of his courtroom victory against claims of plagiarism in his song Shape of You brought by the grime artist Sami Switch, Sheeran noted how these days in the studio he employs a version of CCTV to ensure no hook or bass line is seen to be stolen. “I just film everything,” he said. “We’ve had claims come through on the songs and we go, ‘Well, here’s the footage… You’ll see there’s nothing there’.”
