The winners of every category at the 2024 Brits, updated as the ceremony progresses
• Brit awards 2024: women dominate as Raye scores record-smashing six wins
• Brit awards 2024: as it happened
Blur – The Ballad of Darren
J Hus – Beautiful and Brutal Yard
Little Simz – No Thank You
Raye – My 21st Century Blues – WINNER!
Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy
Sheeran prevails two weeks after winning copyright case that also alleged similarities with Marvin Gaye’s 1973 hit
Ed Sheeran has defeated a second lawsuit that alleged he imitated Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On for his song Thinking Out Loud, two weeks after he prevailed in another high-profile copyright case regarding the two songs.
A district judge in Manhattan, Louis Stanton, dismissed the case that had been brought against Sheeran by Structured Asset Sales (SAS), a company owned by an investment banker David Pullman. Pullman essentially owns a portion of Let’s Get It On, namely part of the song’s copyright originally belonging to Ed Townsend, who wrote the song with Gaye in 1973.
Continue reading...British singer testifies about songwriting practices and plays guitar during trial over whether he copied Gaye’s classic Let’s Get it On
Ed Sheeran played the chord progression to his hit song Thinking Out Loud and sang on the witness stand in Manhattan federal court on Thursday, during a trial over whether he copied Marvin Gaye’s classic Let’s Get it On.
Testifying as the first witness in his own defense to a packed courtroom, the British singer-songwriter described his process for writing the song about everlasting love in 2014, shortly after he began a new romantic relationship and after his grandfather died.
Continue reading...A clean sweep led by Harry Styles was an ‘astonishing’ high note for the music industry – but the domination of older songs reflected the impact of streaming
For the first time since year-end charts were introduced more than 50 years ago, British artists have made up the entirety of the year’s 10 most popular songs in the UK.
Topping the biggest songs of 2022 in the UK was Harry Styles’ omnipresent As It Was; Ed Sheeran had two songs on the list, while new artists such as south London songwriter Cat Burns and Scottish dance duo LF System rubbed shoulders with Kate Bush, whose 1985 single Running Up That Hill topped the UK singles chart for the first time last year after being featured in the latest series of Netflix drama Stranger Things, having originally peaked at No 3.
Continue reading...Former management for Sami Chokri allegedly made ‘huge effort’ to bring song Oh Why to singer’s notice, court hears
Ed Sheeran was targeted with a “concerted plan” to secure his interest in a songwriter who later accused him of copying one of his songs, the high court has been told.
The former management company for Sami Chokri, a grime artist who performs under the name Sami Switch, allegedly made a “huge effort” to bring the 2015 song Oh Why to Sheeran’s notice, the copyright trial heard on Tuesday.
Continue reading...The artist was in court for a dispute with two musicians who claim Shape Of You plagiarises parts of their song
Ed Sheeran has been accused of being a “magpie” who allegedly “borrows” ideas from other artists for his songs on the first day of a three-week copyright trial over his hit single Shape Of You.
Sheeran, 31, appeared at the high court on Friday for the dispute with two musicians who claim Shape Of You – the UK’s bestselling song of 2017 and the most streamed song in Spotify’s history – plagiarises parts of their earlier song Oh Why.
Continue reading...Adele, Ed Sheeran, Abba, Lana Del Rey and Drake all found success in 2021 by delivering more of the same – a result of how our chaotic lives, on and offline, are informing our taste
The biggest album launch of 2021 began with a social media statement tacitly assuring fans that nothing had changed. Adele was once more in a state of heartbreak – “a maze of absolute mess and inner turmoil … consumed by my own grief” – and that the contents of her album 30 would reflect that, as mired in romantic misery as its predecessors, 25 and 21. It was the musical equivalent, she said, of a friend who comes over “with a bottle of wine and a takeaway” to discuss the disastrous state of your love life.
The second-biggest album launch of 2021 was preceded by its creators proudly announcing they had written it “absolutely trend-blind”. Abba had traversed a considerable musical distance over the course of their original career, buffeted by the shifting musical trends of the 70s and early 80s – from the clompy Europop of their debut album to the sophisticated, chilly electronics of The Visitors, by way of glam and sleek disco – but Voyage would offer them preserved in amber, exactly as they were in the late 70s, unspoiled by any musical trends from the 40 years since their split.
Continue reading...Laudably released for charity, the favourite for this year’s Christmas No 1 leaves no musical cliche untwinkled – and its exhortation to forget the pandemic is crass
Given recent government advice to avoid kissing strangers under the mistletoe this Christmas, there’s a sense in which the long-trailed festive hook-up between Ed Sheeran and Elton John counts as a reckless incitement to anarchy. For his part, Sheeran wants nothing more than a relentless tonguing beneath those poison berries this December: “Kiss me,” he sings; then later, “just keep kissing me!” (To be fair, this noted Wife Guy is unquestionably singing about his wife. Did you know he has a wife? He might have mentioned it.)
In every other respect, however, Merry Christmas – in case the perfunctory title didn’t make clear – is the very exemplar of avoiding unnecessary risk during this perilous season. There are sleigh bells. Church bells. Clattering reindeer hooves. A kids’ choir. Sickly strings. The full selection box, and delivered with about as much imagination as that staple stocking filler. Old friends Sheeran and John encourage us to “pray for December snow”, and the overall effect is a blanketing avalanche of plinky-plonky schmaltz rich in bonhomie and derivative in tune.
Continue reading...Olivia Rodrigo, Doja Cat, Billie Eilish and Lil Nas X also among those with multiple nominations in top categories
The highly versatile, socially conscious pianist, singer and composer Jon Batiste has topped this year’s Grammy nominations, with 10 nods.
Batiste’s nominations straddle everything from the top prizes of record and album of the year, to inclusions across R&B, jazz, roots and classical categories. His score for animated film Soul, made with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross of Nine Inch Nails, is also nominated, as are the directors of his music video Freedom.
Continue reading...(Republic)
Swift re-records the 2012 album on which she first embraced synth-pop, tweaking songs and adding others: a mix of saccharine fluff and superb keepers
After Fearless earlier this spring, Taylor Swift reaches the second instalment of her project to re-record (and regain ownership over) the six albums she released for label Big Machine, which were apparently sold out from under her to an old foe. Held up as a classic, 2012’s Red is one half some of the greatest pop songs of all time – I Knew You Were Trouble is the rare pop-EDM crossover that still stands up, the chorus drops hitting like bratty stomps of frustration at her own naivety; We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together is a euphoric cheerleader chant so ingratiating you wonder how nobody came up with it before – and one half schmaltzy stuffing, including collaborations with Ed Sheeran and Snow Patrol’s Gary Lightbody.
It’s the album on which she embraced synth-pop, presumably making its faithful replication slightly easier than the primarily organic Fearless – simply set the controls and go. The new version is more widescreen than the original, which was by no means a wallflower to start with. But revisiting this earlier material there was always going to be the problem that Swift’s voice is richer and more mature than it was a decade ago. She has often wielded her innocence as a weapon, but nowhere more so than on Red, where she used it to rebuke the older man (widely reputed to be actor Jake Gyllenhaal) who broke her heart at 21. The lack of burn and twang here slightly blunts the rabid, deliciously vindictive edge that fuelled the original’s tumultuous depiction of heartbreak, sketched in appropriately vaulting shades of pop, country, balladry and electro-tooled aggression.
Continue reading...Singer, whose new album = is out on Friday, says he is cancelling in-person commitments
Ed Sheeran has announced on his Instagram page that he has tested positive for Covid-19 and is self-isolating.
In the post he said: “It means that I’m now unable to plough ahead with any in-person commitments for now, so I’ll be doing as many of my planned interviews/performances I can from my house.”
Continue reading...UK government says talks with other countries ongoing, after fears artists would incur huge fees post-Brexit
UK musicians and performers will be able to tour in a number of European countries without the need for a visa or work permit, the government has announced.
Rules that came into force at the beginning of the year do not guarantee visa-free travel for musicians in the EU and have prompted fears that touring artists will incur large fees in many of the countries they visit.
Continue reading...The UK’s biggest pop star returns, singing of compulsive hedonism over 80s dance-pop – remind you of anyone?
Spotify has chosen to promote Ed Sheeran’s new single by sitting it at the head of a playlist of his previous hits. The “plays” column of the latter makes for mind-boggling reading: the figures look less like streaming statistics and more like long-distance phone numbers. Every track is immediately recognisable – you could have spent your every waking hour engaged in a dogged attempt to avoid the music of Ed Sheeran and you’d still know exactly what they were and who they were by within seconds of them starting. He’s spent the last decade enjoying the kind of success that, in one sense at least, brooks no argument: even his loudest detractor couldn’t argue against his ability to write one song after another that attains a weird kind of omnipresence, hits that evolve into inescapable facts of daily life.
This is not a state of affairs that Bad Habits looks likely to change. That Sheeran has trailed it as a “surprise” and “mad” tells you more about his innate populism than the song itself: it’s a well-written, extremely commercial pop song, cowritten by regular collaborators Fred Gibson and Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid, the latter of whom also had a hand in earlier Sheeran hits Shape of You, Photograph and Bloodstream.
Continue reading...One of the world’s most celebrated bass players has worked with everyone from Adele to Elton John, the Who and D’Angelo. But the Welsh musician has hidden from the spotlight – until now
By his own admission, Pino Palladino is not a man much accustomed to giving interviews. “Very reticent,” he nods during a Zoom call, his accent speaking noticeably louder of his childhood in Cardiff than his current home in LA. “You know, there was a time when I was featured in all sorts of musicians’ magazines, and then I just thought to myself, ‘Move over, there’s people out there that actually need the publicity.’ Not to blow smoke up my own arse,” he adds hurriedly, “but really I just didn’t want to see or hear from myself.”
It’s a remark in keeping with the astonishing career of one of the most celebrated bass players in the world. It’s hard not to blanche when you consider the sheer number of records that have been sold featuring his work. He played on not one but two of the biggest selling albums of the 21st century: Adele’s 21 and Ed Sheeran’s Divide, as well as with Rod Stewart, Elton John, Bryan Ferry, Simon and Garfunkel and Keith Richards. They’re the biggest names in a startlingly diverse back catalogue of collaborations: Palladino’s playing is the thread that links Perfume Genius with Phil Collins, Harry Styles with Chris de Burgh, and Nine Inch Nails with De La Soul. Indeed, his versatility and omnipresence is a running joke within the music industry. When another fabled bass player, Pink Floyd’s Guy Pratt, got married, he opened his groom’s speech with the words: “I’m only here today because Pino couldn’t make it.”
Continue reading...The singer has reportedly earned $185m in the last year in Forbes’ annual list of highest-paid stars, followed closely by Kylie Jenner and Kanye West
Singer Taylor Swift was named the world’s highest-paid entertainer on Wednesday but was closely followed by two members of the wider Kardashian clan – reality star turned cosmetics queen Kylie Jenner and rapper Kanye West.
The annual Forbes Celebrity 100 list also saw soccer stars Lionel Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar among the top 10, along with British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and 1970s soft rock band the Eagles, who embarked on a new tour in 2018.
Continue reading...Shape of You and Love me Harder among western hits deemed obscene and playable only between 10pm and 3am
More than a dozen western pop songs, including Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You, have been deemed pornographic and banned from being played in daylight hours in Indonesia’s notoriously conservative West Java province.
The West Java broadcasting commission singled out 85 songs, including 17 western pop songs, it said contained adult and offensive content.
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