Ed Sheeran has crafted monster hits like ‘Shape of You," “Perfect,” and “Thinking Out Loud,” but he’s also penned some major songs for other artists. One such example is Justin Bieber’s chart-topping track, “Love Yourself,” a song that he wrote and recorded for 2017’s ÷ (Divide) before handing it off to Bieber after his team didn’t think it would become a hit.
“I know the people involved will deny this to the hilt, but there’s no way that I would have given this song away if people liked it,” he told First We Feast’s Sean Evans in a recent appearance on Hot Ones. “When I wrote Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself,’ I remember playing [it] for people, and they were like, ‘Ehh.’ And so I gave it away, and now it’s like, ‘Why did you give it away? You never played this to us.’”
Sheeran said this isn’t an uncommon occurrence, citing a recent session he had for his upcoming album.
“I’d gone around this bloke’s house, and I’d played him this song three times and played it on acoustic guitar,” he said. “I came to America [and] played it to a couple of people. They emailed him, and then he emailed me, and he’s like, ‘What the f-ck. This is the best song you have on the album. This is the thing.’ And I’m like, ‘Dude, I literally played this to you three times a week ago and you weren’t feeling it then.’”
The singer-songwriter previously told Carson Daly that the song wasn’t slated to make ÷ (Divide) when he gave it up to Bieber.
“‘Love Yourself’ was a song I had written for ÷ (Divide). It just wouldn’t have made it and then Justin [Bieber] took it and did his thing on it and released it as a single and made it what it is,” he said. “So going from a song that would have never been released to—it was the biggest song of last year, it just became Billboard No. 1 of 2016 of the whole year, and to be nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammys—it just shows you that you shouldn’t always write stuff off.”
“Love Yourself” stands as one of the biggest hits of Bieber’s career, landing at No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart and eventually going 8x Platinum. Many fans interpreted the lyrics as a shot at Bieber’s ex Selena Gomez, although Sheeran had written much of the song before he handed it off. While Sheeran has hits of his own that stack up commercially, it’s hard not to wonder how the song would have performed had he kept it for himself.
“How many music industry people does it take to change a lightbulb?” he asked Evans in his Hot Ones interview. “One, and then 99 to ask each other what they think of it.”
Read all the lyrics to Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” on Genius now.
