has appeared to reference his over his huge hit Shape of You, addressing how he’s experienced a ‘predicament’ as of late.
On Sunday evening, the singer performed a concert in aid of the at ’s Royal Albert Hall, transporting the audience back to the early days of his first studio album released over 10 years ago while also raising the roof with his more recent songs.
During his energetic rendition of Don’t – from ​​his second studio album, ×, which came out in 2014 – Sheeran mashed the song up with Blackstreet’s No Diggity and Dr Dre’s The Next Episode with Snoop Dogg.
Speaking to the audience after the performance, he said: ‘I’ve been playing that song just kind of normally as it is, and I was in a sort of predicament recently where people were arguing about songs and scales and stuff like that.’
The 31-year-old explained that it reminded him of the mash-up he created of those songs several years ago, adding: ‘I played it the other night and I was like, that’s actually pretty fun to do.’
The mention of Sheeran’s ‘predicament’ came shortly after the , after two songwriters, Sami Chokri and Ross O’Donoghue, alleged that Shape of You infringed on ‘particular lines and phrases’ from their track, Oh Why.
that the case ‘amounts to a series of tenuous connections and bare assertions contradicted by the contemporaneous documents and the unequivocal evidence of a significant number of relevant witnesses’.
‘They comprise, in substance, the use of the first four notes of the minor pentatonic scale combined with the use of octaves and harmonies in a vocal chant,’ he said.
‘Qualitatively assessed, these elements cannot be characterised as the elements which conferred originality on Oh Why as a musical work.’
Earlier this month, court documents showed that late music pioneer Jamal Edwards – who founded SBTV and helped to launch Sheeran’s career – between Shape of You and another song.
Sheeran during last night’s concert, just over a month after he died at the age of 31.
While introducing You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, the singer said: ‘We lost a really, really amazing soul just over a month ago, Jamal Edwards.
‘He was my best friend, he was my brother. He changed my life.’
