Famous musicians, Ed Sheeran and Tim McGraw, are battling a lawsuit against Sean Carey and Beau Golden for copyrighting Carey/Golden’s 2014 song “When I Found You”. Ed Sheeran co-wrote Tim McGraw and Faith Hill’s song “Rest of Our Life” which became very popular and climbed in the music charts.
The Australian duo Carey/Golden claims the song deliberately copies the music notes and the overall theme from their 2014 song.
You can hear a layered comparison of the two songs following this link. Please judge by yourself.
There are also statements affirming that Sony Music employees knew of the song’s copyright months before the release of “Rest of Our Life” because employee Tim Holland was a marketing manager and therefore in charge of promoting the copyrighted song.
Holland didn’t want to risk losing his job over revealing the copyright and so didn’t disclose to Sony about this issue.
Holland’s girlfriend, Jasmine Rae, is the co-writer of Carey/Golden’s song “When I Found You”. It is believed Holland wanted to expose his girlfriend’s work and increase her credibility by showing the “Rest of Our Life” song to Sony Music and the Australian duo.
In addition, the lawsuit filing is displaying excerpts of both songs to highlight the similarities found. Both songs discuss the concepts of “marriage, the passage of time, aging, and … romantic relationships protecting the speaker from vulnerability”. Carey and Golden, the Australian duo, are asking for five million US dollars in damages including profit loss, an active royalty, and injunctive relief of copyrighted songs.
Thanks, Bharini Mistry for your collaboration in this blog post.