Ed Sheeran teases “big hit” coming soon
The singer has shared that his next project is a "bit more of a curveball"
Ed Sheeran has spoken about what to expect from his next release, sharing that the “curveball” will be arriving in 10 days.
Speaking to ‘The Project NZ’ yesterday (Mach 16) ahead of his Australia and New Zealand tour in February 2023, the singer also confirmed that the next record will not follow his theme of mathematical symbols.
When asked if ‘-‘ (minus) would be the title of his next album, he replied: “That’s not gonna be the next record I put out.”
“I’ve got something else that’s a bit more of a curveball. We’ve got the first thing of it dropping in 10 days. I don’t think it’s gonna be a massive hit in New Zealand though, I’ve got to be honest.”
He continued that it’s “gonna be a big hit, somewhere else”, adding “when you hear it, you’ll understand”.
The singer currently faces the ongoing copyright case with musician Sami Chokri and co-writer Ross O’Donoghue, who allege that Sheeran’s track ‘Shape of You’ plagiarises parts of their 2015 song ‘Oh Why’.
Royalties from the track, estimated to be worth £20million, have been frozen since the claim was issued for “copyright infringement, damages and an account of profits in relation to the alleged infringement” in July 2018.
Earlier this week, Chokri, who performs as ‘Sami Switch’, recalled being “shocked” to hear the singer’s 2017 song on the car radio.
“I was a passenger in my girlfriend’s car and ‘Shape Of You’ came on the radio,” he wrote in a submission to the court. “She and I were both shocked to hear the similarities.”
Sheeran has denied that he plagiarised Chokri’s song, and last week Last sang Nina Simone‘s ‘Feeling Good’ and Blackstreet‘s ‘No Diggity’ in an attempt to prove that the melody in question is similar in pop music.
“If you put them all in the same key, they’ll sound the same,” Sheeran told the court.
In the latest development, a musicology expert told the court that Sheeran’s song is “coincidentally similar” but has “distinctive differences” to Chokri’s song.
US forensic musicologist Anthony Ricigliano, who was instructed by lawyers of Sheeran’s co-writers, told the High Court he was “completely impartial”, adding that it was “objectively unlikely” that any similarities had resulted from “copying”.
However, another musicology expert called in by Chokri and O’Donoghue, Christian Siddell, said he found similarities that were “so numerous and striking that the possibility of independent creation is… highly improbable”.