Zinging out loud: Ed Sheeran snaps at 'Let's Get It On' plagiarism accusers in testy, but musical, testimony

• Ed Sheeran testified for a third day Monday in his plagiarism trial in federal court in Manhattan.
• The Grammy-winning artist appeared to lose his patience at several points in cross examination.

Grammy-winning singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran strummed, sang, and snarked his way through a third day of testimony on Monday.

Sheeran is fighting a lawsuit that claims his 2014 hit, "Thinking Out Loud," stole its chord progression and groove from Marvin Gaye's 1973 soul classic, "Let's Get It On."

"Is that really your argument, here?" Sheeran snapped at plaintiff's lawyers in a Manhattan federal courtroom, as he was confronted with a mistake in his earlier testimony.

"You're not breaking any new ground, here," he quipped at another point in his cross examination, sitting in the witness stand in a trim charcoal suit and a dark blue tie, his acoustic guitar at the ready behind him.

Kathryn Griffin Townsend, the daughter of Gaye's songwriting partner, Ed Townsend and other relatives sued Sheeran in 2017, claiming he stole parts of her dad's hit song to use in his own music.

She, along with Ed Townsend's sister, Helen McDonald, and the estate of his late wife, Cherrigale, are seeking an unspecified payout from Sheeran. They also want the artist barred from ever performing "Thinking Out Loud."

Sheeran says "Thinking Out Loud" is a unique composition, but demonstrated to the jury Monday that songs often share similar — or even the same — chord structures.

Sheeran called it "insulting" to be accused of stealing. Asked if he'd read the lawsuit, he said curtly, "I'm not a lawyer."

"I know the chords that I'm playing on that guitar," he said in another angry exchange with a plaintiff's lawyer, as he challenged an expert musicologist's testimony from last week.

"It's me playing the chords," he said. "Obviously I would know better."

The opening chords to Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" are D, D/F#, G, A

Monday morning had begun quite cheerfully and musically, with jurors hearing snippets of songs — some sung by Sheeran, some recorded — from more than a dozen artists, including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Van Morrison.

Sheeran was attempting to prove how artists and songs often share the same basic chord structures, like the four-chord progression shared by "Thinking Out Loud" and "Let's Get It On."

To demonstrate, Sheeran repeatedly strummed the opening chords to "Thinking Out Loud" — which he says are D, D/F#, G, A.

"Oh, she fakes, just like a woman," Sheeran sang as he strummed, delivering a few bars of Dylan's 1966 hit.

"Kiss me under the light of a thousand suns," he continued seamlessly, from his own disputed song, singing over the same four-chord progression.

Still strumming the same four chords, he started singing, "I can feel her heart beat from a thousand miles," from Van Morrison's "Crazy Love."

Then came another two bars of "Thinking Out Loud" —"Take me into your loving arms," he crooned — followed by the soulful line by Curtis Mayfield, "People get ready, there's a train a-comin'."

At other points Monday, jurors saw concert footage where Sheeran mashed-up "Thinking Out Loud" with still other songs, including Stevie Wonder's "Superstitious" and Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine."

"It's a common progression," Sheeran told jurors, putting his guitar back down.

At one point in testimony, defense lawyer Ilene Farkas tried to make the point that Sheeran was never interested in, or particularly influenced by, "Let's Get It On."

She tried to elicit from Sheeran that while he knows the music of his favorite artist, Van Morrison, inside and out, he'd have a hard time playing "Let's Get It On" from memory.

"Into The Mystic — Oh, can I play it?" Sheeran asked Farkas, when she asked what his favorite Van Morrison song was, and whether he knew it by heart.

Jurors laughed as Farkas said, "People are going to get mad at me," then told her client there was no need for him to actually play "Into The Mystic."

While the performer appeared good natured and self-effacing throughout most of his direct testimony, he lost his patience by the end of his turn on the stand.

"I find it very insulting," he said of the plagiarism accusation.

"I've worked really hard to get where I am and do what I do," he said, adding that he feels artists are being targeted with frivolous plagiarism lawsuits due to their success.

Sheeran testified that other artists recently told him he had to win the case, "for all of us."

"I don't know why he's allowed to be an expert," he complained of the plaintiff's expert musicologist, with whom he disagreed on numerous points, including what the four-chord progression actually is.

In the plaintiff's ear, the four allegedly-stolen chords are D, F# minor, G, and A7.

"It's what we're here for," Sheeran testified, sounding exasperated.

"Is it the same chords. And it's not."