[music — Ed Sheeran, “Shape of You”] To be honest, I know what we’re doing now is looking into it. But none of us thought that much into it. (singing) “So the bar is where I go. ... Me and my friends ...” I didn’t make this song to be mine to sing. He’d already said everything he wanted to say for that moment on his record. We went in there just to write a song. If we went into the session writing a song for Ed Sheeran, I don’t think we’d ever have recorded “Shape of You.” (singing) “Girl, you know I want your love.” (singing) “Your love was handmade for somebody like me. Come on, now. Follow my lead. Come on, now. Follow my lead. Mmm.” It was the first day I’d ever been in with Steve. Literally, the first thing he did was he walked over to the keyboard and played — [log drums] And I was kind of like, “Well, yeah, that’s a good start.” The log drum that we used — it was the first sound that I found. It just felt like a world sound. Ed started doing that thing on the guitar that he does. [playing percussion on guitar] And then like a — [knocking on guitar] I honestly believe it’s because Ed is so impatient that he can’t wait for me to get a drum sound up. So he goes out and he says, “Look, I’ll just do it on the guitar.” So he was doing that in the studio. And Steve said, “Can we get that on the loop?” Straightaway, he goes, “Give me a clean track.” And he just starts layering over the top. This is 15 minutes into meeting him. And we’re away. We’re off. [music] The easiest thing with this key would be to go with it — [humming] — like, of the rhythm. Ed goes completely against that. He’s almost the percussion with it. So — (singing) “The club isn’t the best place to find a lover, so the bar is where I go.” [imitates drums] And that keeps the pace up. I’m always a fan of keeping it more stripped. Because I’m an acoustic artist first and foremost. And when I play live, I can’t replicate all these things. I haven’t got any other musicians. So you don’t need anything else. Because that’s the percussion. Ed is the instrument. (singing) “One week in, we let the story begin. We’re going out on our first date. You and me are thrifty, so go all-you-can-eat. Fill up your bag and I fill up a plate.” Johnny’s like my main guy that I work with. Me and him together on our own have probably written 200, 300 songs. His attention span can be fairly low. One of the things I did to try and keep him in the room while I would be working on a track — I would have a suitcase full of Lego I’d pull into the hotel room and say, “There you go, you build that.” And it was great. Because he would sit and build the Lego and kind of get lost in that world for a second, then come up with this moment that was everything. [playing guitar and humming] Because as we were writing it, I kind of knew I wanted it to be a really sort of R&B type feel. And I was like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we put an interpolation of ‘No Scrubs’ in it.” So the bit that went — (singing) “Girl, you know I want your love” originally was — (singing) “Girl, you know I want your love.” There were some moments that I find on the “Shape of You” tapes which were really interesting. [music] So that’s a perfect example of how Ed — it starts off as a [humming], just a noise. And then you hear that moment where he discovers it should be, “Come on.” He’s inviting this person in. He has in his mind: “This is how I want the song to sound. This is what I want to talk about.” Originally, I think we were talking about it maybe being, “My T-shirt smells like you.” And he’s like, “No, no. It’s got to be ‘my bedsheets.’” It’s “bedsheets smell of you.” And I remember thinking, oh, God no. Not bedsheets. On the original version, it doesn’t actually say, “I’m in love with the shape of you.” It only says that at the beginning bit. (singing) “Last night, you were in my room. And now, my bedsheets smell like you. Every day discovering something brand-new. I’m in love with your body.” See. There’s, like, a weird thing in there. That’s pretty odd. [music] “I’m in love with your body” on its own felt objectifying to me. Yeah, he’s got a, like, really warm heart. Where I come from, there’s this phrase. They say, “Look at the shape of you.” And that means, look at the way you’ve showed up. (singing) This song is just one loop the whole way through. It’s a very monotonous thing. So when you’ve got that for the whole song — the only thing you can do are light and shade bits. [music] So once you’ve heard the first 10 seconds, there’s no more learning to be done when it comes to the hook. Then everything else is a surprise. It’s so minimal that every time something new does come in, you hear it. (singing) (singing) “Stop, put the Van the Man on the jukebox, and then we start to dance. And I’m singing like, girl, you know I want your love.” Layered up some vocals, some of these guitars. One of the things that we added was the Mellotron. It just added a little color to it for me — just a little bass drum, just to give it some weight. We’ve got a little 16 clap going. Then we added a little rim. [music] That’s kind of the only thing that’s slightly off the beat, you know. So it feels like it’s moving. It’s moving all the time. You’re not getting bored. Every time you start getting bored of it, something new comes in or something drops out. [clapping] It kind of builds and builds and builds and then drops, and then builds and builds and builds, and then drops. And then that at the end, it has a moment which I quite like. (singing) “Come on. Be my baby. Come on. Come on. Be my baby. Come on. I’m in love with the shape of you. We push and pull like a magnet do. Although my heart is falling, too. I’m in love with your body.” You don’t really notice it happening, but it’s happening underneath. And you just get this feeling of tension, release, tension, release. (singing) “I’m in love with the shape of you.” We moved on to another song. We’ve actually got a cut with Faith Hill and Tim McGraw that we wrote the same day. And then we did another one after that. We wrote a bunch that day. Oh — the Liam Payne one as well. And that was when, at the end of the third song, he said, “Go back, and can you play me the first tune again?” We thought it might be a duet, and the duet would be that the girl sings one verse and that the guy sings another verse. Then I was like, “This sounds like Rudimental should do it with Rihanna.” He said, “I don’t think this is for me.” I was off to the studio where my record label head was. I played it. And then he was just kind of looking at me like, “Why are you wanting to give this away?” [music — Ed Sheeran, “Shape of You”] (singing) “I’m in love with the shape of you. We push and pull like a magnet do. And though my heart is falling, too, I’m in love with your body.” I don’t really know what it means to choose a hit. I just like writing songs. It’s not rocket science. It’s much, much more complicated. Kind of the best hour and a half of my life. To follow a trend is a common thing in pop. And it’s something that I’ve always tried to not do. But I was wrong this time. And it’s one of the biggest songs in my career. (singing) “I’m in love with your body. Come on. Be my baby. Come on. Come on. Be my baby. I’m in love with your body. Every day discovering something brand-new. I’m in love with the shape of you.” [strums guitar] Cool.