Ed Sheeran Will Film His Songwriting Sessions To Stop Plagiarism Claims
Ed Sheeran revealed that he films all of his songwriting sessions these days; since being cleared by a High Court judge Wednesday (April 6) from stealing his 2017 mega-hit “Shape of You” from another songwriter, he wants to make sure he doesn’t have to defend his songwriting in a court of law again.
In a preview of Friday’s BBC Newsnight interview, the English singer, 31, said that he films all of his songwriting sessions to protect against future plagiarism claims. Sheeran spoke about a previous claim made in 2017 in the U.S. about his song “Photograph,” saying that he “personally” regretted settling over the song, and didn’t play the song for a long time.
“I just stopped playing it. I felt weird about it, it kind of made me feel dirty,” he said, adding, “Now I just film everything, everything is on film. We’ve had claims come through on the songs and we go, ‘Well, here’s the footage and you watch. You’ll see there’s nothing there.'”
He said that songwriting in the studio has changed since the first plagiarism claim and he often finds that he is “second-guessing” himself saying, “There’s the George Harrison point where he said he’s scared to touch the piano because he might be touching someone else’s note. There is definitely a feeling of that in the studio. I personally think the best feeling in the world is the euphoria around the first idea of writing a great song. That feeling has now turned into ‘Oh wait, let’s stand back for a minute.’ You find yourself in the moment, second-guessing yourself.”
Watch the preview of the interview below: