You can’t go wrong with a classic — that wave of nostalgia and joy you get interacting with the media you loved back in the day … there aren’t many things more powerful than that.
Producers have been tapping into that force for a long time, and as movie studios and television networks scurry to catch up, so are musicians outside of hip-hop.
One of these, Ed Sheeran, has been plagued with issues of copyright infringement the past few years for borrowing from Marvin Gaye and an X Factor contestant to try to get the perfect, happy-nostalgia inducing sound.
Billboard reports that he’s dodged similar troubles beginning to swirl around his song “Shape of You” by giving a songwriting credit to former Xscape singer-songwriters Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Harris as well as producer Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs.
Beyond her work with Xscape, Burruss was the scribe behind the Destiny’s Child classic “Bills, Bills, Bills,” and the Burruss-Harris team wrote the seminal TLC hit “No Scrubs.”
Seminal being the key word in the case of Sheeran — fans and critics alike have said the song bears more than a casual debt to the TLC hit since its release, and earlier this week, Sheeran and his team gave credit where credit is due.
Burruss and Harris responded via Instagram, with the following posts:
Photos: Instagram
Congrats to them all, and hopefully Sheeran’s example will encourage others across all forms of media to credit the creators.