Year 8, Day 333

Hey guys. Today's song is Shape Of You by Ed Sheeran.

Photo by: Eva Rinaldi

I've featured Ed Sheeran before and I'm pretty sure that everyone knows who he is by now so I'm going to go through this fast. He's always been musical, singing from an early age and playing both guitar and cello. He also was a theatre kid, joining the production of Frankenstein through Youth Music Theatre UK in 2007. He started recording music in 2004, releasing some stuff independently then started playing gigs with his friend Michael Rosenberg (aka Passenger) in 2006. In 2008 he moved to London and started playing there, then in 2009 he began to study music at the Academy of Contemporary Music only to leave to support Just Jack. He released an EP in 2009, then in 2010 he toured with Example and released another EP before starting to post on YouTube. He released two more EPs in 2010 and one in 2011 before he gained mainstream success and was signed. Since then he has released six albums with the first from 2011 and the most recent released this year. Obviously recently there has been lots of news about Ed Sheeran because of the lawsuit filed against him by the heirs of Ed Townsend over plagiarism of the song Let's Get It On. First off: I've talked about it before that you can't copyright chord progressions because chords are similar in almost every song in every genre, so Ed Townsend does not have private rights to a chord just because the song it was used in became iconic. Also I have a huge problem with it being the heirs of this person making a stink, because it's clearly just a cash grab over something they were never involved in, but now feel entitled to. So I'm glad Ed Sheeran won, because something like this setting a precedent in music and legal cases like this would have killed music and the music industry completely. We seriously dodged a bullet with this one so it's good to shout it out today.

Peace.