Ed Sheeran misses grandmother's funeral due to copyright trial

May 4, 2023

Ed Sheeran missed his grandmother's funeral due to an copyright trial taking place in New York.

The singer's 98-year-old grandmother Anne 'Nancy' Sheeran was laid to rest in the small Irish village where she lived today.

The Daily Mail reports Ed's father John addressed his son's absence during a eulogy.

"I am very sad that our son Edward is unable to be here today. He’s so upset that he cannot be present – he has to be thousands of miles away in a court in America defending his integrity," John said.

"I know he is comforted by the fact that he was able to spend some precious time alone with his grandma just a month ago."

Ed reportedly was able to watch the funeral online.

It comes as he battles claims that he stole material from Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On to make a new tune a decade ago.

During an opening statement last week, Townsend attorney Ben Crump said a Zurich concert clip in which Sheeran can be heard segueing on stage between. Let's Get It On and the alleged offending song, Thinking Out Loud, amounted to “smoking gun” proof that Sheeran was violating copyrights.

Sheeran's attorney, Ilene Farkas, countered Crump's claim by providing the jury with a mini-concert Monday from her client, who cheerfully picked up a guitar from behind his witness chair whenever she asked him to demonstrate how he could switch from his song to somebody else's and back again in a practice known as “mashups”.

He said he used the mashups to “spice it up a bit” during concerts, generally choosing songs that utilised similar chords.

The jury has retired to consider a verdict.

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