From a New York Times story by Ben Sisario headlined “Ed Sheeran Defends Himself in Court, With His Guitar”l

Ed Sheeran testified with a guitar on Thursday at a closely watched copyright trial, defending his hit ballad “Thinking Out Loud” against an accusation that he had copied it from Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On.”

Cradling his acoustic instrument in a federal courtroom in Manhattan, Mr. Sheeran demonstrated the four-chord sequence at the heart of his song, which he said was written in a few hours in early 2014 with his friend and longtime collaborator Amy Wadge. He recounted just stepping out of the shower of his home when he heard Ms. Wadge strumming the chords, and he remembered thinking: “We need to do something with that.”