More copyright infringement, this time with Ed Sheeran

Coming on the heels of Led Zeppelin’s upcoming court case over “Stairway to Heaven” is news that the attorney who won the “Blurred Lines” case has just filed another lawsuit, this time against Ed Sheeran for copyright infringement. Richard Busch, who previously scored a $7.3 million award for the estate of Marvin Gaye against Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, is now representing songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard. They claim that Sheeran’s top 10 song “Photograph” infringes on their earlier work called “Amazing,” most notably performed by “The X-Factor” winner Matt Cardle.

First of all, yeah, the songs sound similar. They’re both power ballads in E flat and have similar chord progressions. But conservatively-speaking, there are probably hundreds of thousands of recorded and released power ballads in E flat that have similar chord progressions. The choruses also have similar sung note progressions. They do sound very similar to me, but honestly they sound similar in the way that so much widely popular, beige pop music sounds similar. Generic. I’m not shitting on Ed Sheeran or the songwriters, but really, this is a super boring song and I could probably find a hundred others that sound just as boring and just as generic. Okay, I’m shitting on them a little bit. This song is no “Thinking Out Loud,” let’s just say that.

But hey, I am neither the songwriters nor am I the judge, so have at it. Compare below:

Here is Matt Cardle performing “Amazing”:

And here’s Sheeren with “Photograph”:

Yawn.

Meanwhile, Skrillex and Justin Beiber are being sued by White Hinterland for an 8 second sample at the beginning of White Hinterland’s “Ring the Bell” and being used in Beiber’s song “Sorry.” Mostly I hate writing about this at all because it puts me in the position of DEFENDING SKRILLEX AND JUSTIN BEIBER because no, they didn’t steal this.

Finally, Beyoncé is being sued by filmmaker Matthew Fulks because she stole images of, I don’t know…graffiti? People leaning against walls? Using red light in a film? Shots of grass? This one is so dumb I really can’t even. Pitchfork covers it better.