Ed Sheeran talks copyright lawsuit, new tour and 'Subtract' l GMA

I'm going to tell you the studio is a buzz this morning. We are back now with four time Grammy winner Ed Sheeran. He has a new album, number one in iTunes, a new docu-series and a new tour, all of which debuted the same week that he won his copyright lawsuit for his hit, Thinking Out Loud. Would you welcome back Ed Sheeran here to Good Morning America. What a standing room only here. I'm going to tell you, you've had a busy little time right now. Just last week winning in court.

What do you think that stood out to the jury that helped them rule in your favor? A hundred and one songs with the same chord sequence. That was just like scratching the surface. So I think it was basically that was, yeah, it was very quick to see that and be like, oh yeah, it's not original. We did a piece last week explaining that about the basic chords that are used throughout. I've got to ask you this. Whose idea was it to bring your guitar there on stand? It was something like I've been wanting to do it for ages since it came out, but you have to do due diligence in court. So I just waited and knew that I would have my day to explain it and didn't rush anything.

Yeah, you were very good about it. You were very graceful and showed a lot of grace throughout it all. Thank you. Can we talk about this docu-series that you have with this? Absolutely, yeah. Plus, because what a year you have had. I'm so grateful that your wife is doing well after her cancer diagnosis. You lost a very, very dear friend.

So why was this now the right time to do the series? Well, I didn't actually know that that was what we were making. I was sort of filming a documentary on my album being made and the music video is being done and the gigs around it. And I just basically, the people that were making the documentary were like, we don't want to make some polished promo press package. So we're going to film everything and just trust us that we're going to do something that's respectful to you. And they made this documentary on grief, basically. And yeah, I think it's really beautiful. But people need to, we shy away from talking about that.

And it's so important. And thank you because normally you're private and have your right to do so, but to kind of like let us in a little bit. Yeah, I think it, you know, this album that I've made, I feel like I needed to give some context to it because I handed it into my record label and they thought it was a breakup album. Really? I mean, like, tell people what it's about. But yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about Subtract.

I mean, it just came out and the critics are raving about it saying it's your best. I've never actually ever had an album where, you know, out the gate, people are saying it's good. It's usually like years later, people look back and go, yeah, it was all right. But so yeah, I'm really pleased with how it's been received. It's like, I sort of, it's different territory for me. I usually go in with like big pop singles and have it, whereas this is very much, it just exists as an album. And it's just something I'm super proud of and it'll just exist in my discography forever.

And it's already a fan favorite. So it is already a fan favorite quickly. And also a fan favorite. You were just in Dallas, didn't you? Yeah, yeah. We kicked off the tour at the Cowboys Stadium, which was, I was saying to you before cameras are on, I'm still like honored and surprised that like America is such a fast moving country and you guys have such good American music here. But I'm always surprised that you still want to listen to the British guy coming over. So I'm happy with the tour.

We appreciate good music. But what I love about it is that you have this huge stadium tour, but then also the intimate venues. What's it like being back in North America and playing again in front of all these audiences? Great. I mean, I haven't been here in five years. So it's really good being back and doing this. The reason I wanted to do the small gigs before the big gigs is like this album. I'm doing some of these albums in the big show, but it really works well in a small intimate environment.

So I'm playing on a Friday night. I'll be doing a theater and then on Saturday I'm doing the stadium. And it's just nice to have the variety. I love performing everywhere. Like if I just, if you just had a hamburger every single day of your life, you would get sick of it eventually. It's nice to have the variety. I could eat a hamburger ever.

And I would never get sick of you. I probably could as well. No. Pasta would be for me. Pasta. I could have pasta every day. Every single day.

And I mean that. I mean, and I appreciate the way you can play the big stadiums and then the small. Does that take a lot out of you like the back to back like that? No, because I kind of like, in the tour in Europe we were doing a lot of back to back stadiums, sort of like four in a row or five in a row. And that really does like knack of you after a while. But I feel, yeah, doing two shows a week, it's actually really nice for my family balance life because I'm just playing two nights a week and the rest of the time I get to be a dad at home. Yeah, that's good. I know you got to perform for us, but we, you had a little impromptu performance.

Yeah. You got up on a car here in New York City. What was that about? A lot of people are saying that this was someone else's car that I destroyed. So basically that's the car from the music video. So it's our car. And when I got there, the girl that was working at our record label went, now I'm not meant to tell you this, but if you did get on the car and perform, we're not going to say anything like that about. So I arrived, I got up in the car, sung a couple of songs and then put it online.

And yeah, it went viral. I haven't had many viral things. It was quite nice to be viral for playing in the street. I know. It was a talk of the city. You are. But thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to talk with us this morning because we knew you were going to perform and he is going to perform to us. You can stream his latest album, Subtract. And Ed Sheeran, the sum of it all. I love the name of the docuseries. Thank you. And I'm going to be back with another video. It's streaming now on Disney Plus.

Well, hey there, GMA fans. Robin Roberts here. Thanks for checking out our YouTube channel. Lots of great stuff here. So go on, click the subscribe button right over here to get more of awesome videos and content from GMA every day, anytime. We thank you for watching and we'll see you in the morning on GMA.

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