Ed Sheeran said his recent copyright High Court battle was about ‘standing up for what was right’, as he said he had ‘no choice’ in defending his work.
The singer and co-writer Johnny McDaid faced accusations that their hugely successful hit Shape of You had ripped off the 2015 song Oh Why by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, and the trial began in London last month.
After 11 days, Ed was vindicated when a judge concluded that the multi-award-winning artist “neither deliberately nor subconsciously” copied a phrase from Oh Why, and ruled that Ed had not plagiarised the track.
Following his victory, the 31-year-old spoke with BBC Two’s Newsnight, and said he had “no other choice” but to defend his work in the High Court.
“You can get a judgement or you can have a settlement and [when] you know that you're in the right, then you can't settle just out of principle. You can't settle,” Ed explained.
“Our royalties were frozen and we were given two options and we chose the option that was integral to us,” he added.
The singer, said to be worth more than £147 million, said the case had taken an “extraordinary strain” on both him and his co-writer, and said the case was “long and unpleasant”.
Johnny, best known for being part of rock band Snow Patrol, told the programme the case got “really heavy”.
“The cost to our mental health and creativity was really tangible,” he added.
Ed revealed he now films all of his creative writing sessions in order to protect himself from future plagiarism claims, and said his songwriting has been “tainted” as he’s second-guessing himself.
“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,” he shared.
He also spoke about the $20m copyright infringement dispute over his song Photograph, which he settled in 2017, and confessed he refused to play the song because he felt “dirty”.
“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,” Ed said.
Watch Ed’s full interview on Newsnight at 10.30pm on Friday, BBC Two
Do you have a story to sell? Get in touch with us at webcelebs@mirror.co.uk or call us direct 0207 29 33033
