Life 101: The more you hate your work, the more you should release it as a single
Today is a glorious day for Ed Sheeran fans: The dreamy ginger singer has just dropped his newest album, "Divide", which contains the ear-wormy single "Shape of You".
But, unlike the shape of you, "Divide" wasn't something that Sheeran was totally in love with. In fact, one particularly popular song almost didn't make it onto the album. He walks us through the tracks on "Divide", which is now available on Spotify.
How about the wildly popular “Shape of You”?
“Shape Of You” was actually the only song that I was like, “This isn’t me at all.”
It took Johnny and Steve – the guys I wrote it with – probably about a month or two to convince me that it should even be on the album, and it probably took them another month to convince me that it should be a single.
Originally, instead of “my bedsheets”, it was meant to be “my T-shirt smells of you’”or something like that, but I changed it to “bedsheets” so it could be androgynous.
Let’s talk about “Happier”.
I’ve definitely got to a point in my life where I’m friends with all my ex-girlfriends now, like we’re all cool and it’s very much like I’m really happy that you’re happy and with someone that you love, and they are really happy that I’m happy and with someone and there’s a grown-up element to it.
Happier was like that coming out I guess – me writing a grown-up song.
What’s the story behind “How Would You Feel”?
I really wanted it to sound like an old school Van Morrison Song. I played a really s*** guitar solo on it trying to be John Mayer and then was like, “Ah, I have got John Mayer’s e-mail, let me just e-mail him see if he’ll play on it.”
So, I sent it off to him, kind of forgot about it and then John Mayer sent it back with this f****** amazing solo on it and I was like, “Ooh, wow, this sounds like a song now!”
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