"Shape of You"

About

"Shape of You" is a pop song by singer Ed Sheeran. The song proved very popular, and after its release was used in various remixes and memes online. In 2018, the song became embroiled in a copyright battle, as another singer accused Sheeran of stealing the track from him.

Origin

"Shape of You" was released by Sheeran on January 6th, 2017 as one of the two lead singles from his upcoming album, ÷ (the other single was "Castle on the Hill").^[1] Its music video gained over 3.6 billion views on YouTube.

Spread

"Shape of You" peaked at number one in 34 countries. In September of 2017, it became the most streamed song on Spotify. It was the best-selling song of 2017 and won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance at that year's Grammy Awards. After its release, Ed Sheeran fans made memes expressing their excitement, which were covered by Billboard^[2] (examples shown below).

On YouTube, the song became the subject of an animated remix video series in which artists animated clips to the song using original characters. Some popular examples include a video by PimPichc that gained over 425,000 views (shown below, left). Another by Felispirit gained over 670,000 views (shown below, right).

Several other popular remixes of the song on YouTube include a Trap remix posted by TrapNation that gained over 89 million views (shown below, left) and a Hit Those Notes remix posted by Memeski that gained over 2 million views (shown below, right).

Copyright Lawsuit

On July 1st 2018, The Sun^[3] reported that Sheeran launched a lawsuit against songwriter Sam Chokri, who successfully argued that "The Shape of You" was a copy of his song, "Oh Why" earlier in the year to the Performing Rights Society. This meant that Sheeran would not receive any money from performances and streams of the song. Sheeran sued Chokri, saying he did not copy the song and that Chokri had damaged his reputation.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References