Thinking out loud, it seems Ed Sheeran is enjoying a legal victory lap.
Weeks after a New York jury found he did not plagiarize Marvin Gaye‘s “Let’s Get It On,” Sheeran was cleared of a similar lawsuit filed by Structured Asset Sales.
In 2018, SAS alleged Sheeran’s 2014 song ‘“Thinking Out Loud” lifted parts from Gaye’s 1973 hit. SAS “purchased one-third of the copyright” to Gaye’s song and sought $100 million in damages, according to Pitchfork.
In legal documents filed Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton dismissed the lawsuit finding Sheeran and “Thinking Out Loud” co-writer Amy Wadge did not plagiarize parts of Gaye’s song.
“It is an unassailable reality that the chord progression and harmonic rhythm in ‘Let’s Get It On’ are so commonplace, in isolation and in combination, that to protect their combination would give ‘Let’s Get It On’ an impermissible monopoly over a basic musical building block,” the legal document said.
Representatives for Sheeran and SAS did not immediately respond to The Times’ separate requests for comment Thursday.
If there’s a sense of déjà vu around Tuesday’s decision, it’s most likely because the Grammy-winner’s legal victory came just weeks after he won a similar lawsuit earlier this month.
Following a week-long trial, a New York jury sided with the hitmaker in the lawsuit brought on Gaye collaborator Ed Townsend’s family in 2016.
In a statement outside of the New York courthouse, Sheeran said he was “obviously very happy” with the result.
“It looks like I’m not having to retire from my day job after all,” he joked, recalling a dramatic statement he made during the trial. “But at the same time, I’m unbelievably frustrated that baseless claims like this are allowed to go to court at all.”
A day after winning the lawsuit, Sheeran treated New York fans to an impromptu concert in Soho. Outside his American Express pop-up store, Sheeran climbed to the top of a car with a guitar in tow and performed his new song “Boat” for a swarm of fans.
Sheeran’s recent legal wins have coincided with the promotion of his new album “Subtract” (“-”), which dropped May 5.
“Sheeran’s singing, with its intricately bent notes and its sense of a sob held just in check, is so vivid that the truth of his experience always comes through,” Times critic Mikael Wood wrote of the new release.
