The judgment is an emphatic vindication of the creative genius of Ed, Johnny [McDaid] and Steve [Mac].” So trumpeted Ed Sheeran’s lawyers, at the news that he and his songwriting team had won the high-profile copyright case brought against him by Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, over similarities between Sheeran’s 2017 hit “Shape Of You”, and Chokri’s 2015 release “Oh Why”.
Steady on. A key pillar of Sheeran’s defence was that the passage in question – four ascending pre-hook “oh I”s – was such a common and formulaic echo of the pentatonic scale, so overused and obvious, that it was all but unattributable. Sheeran even sang sections of “Feeling Good” and Blackstreet’s “No Diggity” in court as evidence of how predictable he’d been while writing “Shape Of You”. There’s no triumph for the art of imaginative musicianship in Justice Zacaroli’s decision that Sheeran had “neither deliberately or subconsciously” ripped off Chokri’s song, or even heard it at all.
