Appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday March 26, singer and songwriter Ed Sheeran revealed that Rihanna was the one who inspired and encouraged him to write what is now two of his most famous hit songs ever.
He revealed the information on national TV
In his interview on The Tonight Show on March 26, Ed Sheeran told Jimmy Fallon that he had written two of the biggest songs credited to him with Rihanna in mind.
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The 34-year-old artist is known for often writing music for other artists, not just himself, and he had crafted these two tracks hoping Rihanna would be the one singing them.
One of them he sang himself and the other was given to Justin Bieber
Sheeran shared that he had written Shape of You for Rihanna. The song which amassed more than 4.2 billion streams on Spotify alone when it came out in 2017 is now his most popular track and the second most streamed song on the platform.
The other track which he envisioned for Rihanna was Love Yourself, which was eventually released by Justin Bieber who topped the charts with the track. Sheeran had written the song with Benny Blanco.
Sheeran praised Rihanna’s taste in music
Sheeran explained why he had written them for Rihanna, telling Fallon, “Rihanna has the best taste out of anyone. She always picks just really, really great songs. So as songwriters within the songwriting community, you’re always writing songs to pitch to Rihanna.”
“Like every single album that I’ve ever done, I’ve always gone to write, on the side, ‘Let’s try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna,’” he continued.
Sheeran didn’t feel like Shape of You was right for him
The singer and songwriter admitted he didn’t feel like Shape of You suited him at first as he had written it for Rihanna. But with a few edits and adjustments he was able to make the song sound more like him.
“Even though I wrote it, I didn’t really feel like it suited me, and then I changed little bits about it,” he said, explaining that he added acoustic guitar chords to make it sound like something he’d sing live.
It took some time for him to accept the song as his
Sheeran added that even after the adjustments he still had to get his “head around it… because I very much wrote it with someone else in mind.”
Fallon told Sheeran that Rihanna is “like your muse” which the singer agreed to.
Sheeran said that Rihanna inspires many
Sheeran fondly told Fallon that the Diamonds singer is an inspiration to many in the music industry, saying, “I promise you, there’ll be so many songwriters out there [whose] best song came from trying to write a Rihanna song.”
