With its scathing shade-throwing lyrics – the effortlessly offensive ‘my mama don’t like you and she likes everyone’ - and mysterious muse – first love Selena? Former fling Hailey Baldwin? That random girl he insta-stalked? - it’s hard for us to imagine anyone but the Biebs behind break up anthem Love Yourself.
But now Ed-loves-a-ballad-Sheeran has revealed that when he originally penned the Number One track, he didn’t actually have Bieber in mind at all.
In an interview with 97.1 AMP radio, Ed has revealed that he actually wrote the song for…himself.
‘That was a song I had written for Divide. It just wouldn’t have made it’ Sheeran told host Carson Daly ‘And then Justin took it and did his thing on it, and released it as a single and made it what it is.’
While we know Ed has had his fair share of relationship dramz – and like best mate Tay Swift, he’s not afraid to write a song about it – we’ve got to admit, we’re quite glad he handed this one over.
Justin’s Love Yourself not only became our karaoke anthem of the year – seriously, find me one person who doesn’t sing along to this song when it comes on the radio? – but it was also named Billboard’s Number 1 Song of 2016 and is nominated for Song of the Year at next month’s Grammys: a title that is currently held by Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud.
Want to hear Ed’s version of Love Yourself? Tough.
At a charity gala performance held last November, Ed introduced his only-recorded performance of the track with ‘I'll probably never play this song again but I just want do it once.’
Fine. We prefer Justin’s version anyway.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.