Ed Sheeran's 'Shape of You': Making 2017’s Biggest Track | Diary of a Song

to be honest I know what we're doing now is like looking into it but none of us thought that I didn't make the song to be mind sick it already said everything you wanted to say for that moment on his record we went in there just to write a song if we went into the session write a song for Ed Sheeran I don't think we'd ever love for somebody like me come on now follow my lead come come now for Molly it was the first day I'd ever been him asleep the first literally the first thing he did was he walked over to a keyboard and played and then I was kind of like well we ass that's a good start log drum that we use there's the first sound that I found I just felt like a world sound ed started doing that thing on the guitar that he does and I liked it I honestly believe it's because Edie 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 just do 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 give me a clean track and he just starts layering over the top this is 15 minutes into meeting him you know and we were away we're off [Music] easiest thing with this this key would be to go with it the lot of the rhythm it goes completely against that he's almost the percussion with it so Bob isn't the best place to find the lovers of the bar and that keeps the Pacer I'm always a fan of keeping it more strict because I'm I'm 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 that's ed ed is the instrument story begin we're going now [Music] play Johnny's like my main guy that I work with me and him together on our own are probably written to 300 songs his attention span could 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 but have like a suitcase full of Lego I 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 and come up with this this moment that was everything [Music] because as we were writing it I kind of knew I wanted it to be like a really sort of R&B type feel and I was like wouldn't it be cool if like we put like an interpolation and no scrubs in it so the bit that won't go you know I'm sure love originally was ill you know I won't show other there were some moments that I find on on the the shape of you tapes which which were really interesting so that's that's a perfect example of how you add it starts off as a just a noise and then you hear that moment where he discovers it should be come on he's inviting this person and 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 on my t-shirt smells like you and he's like no no it's got to be my bedsheets it's bad sheep smell of you and I remember thinking oh god no not bad sheets 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 in my bed sheet smell like you so it's like a weird thing in that us pretty [Music] I'm in love with your body on on its own felt objectifying to me yeah he's got he's got a really warm heart do you like do you not like I'm in love I do it's just I just always know where I come from there's this phrase they say look at the shape you and that means you know look at the way you've showed up yeah 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 a light light and shade bits 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 its lay it up small 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 and there's kind of the only thing that's so slightly off the beat you know so it's feels like it's moving it's moving on all the time you're not getting bored every time you start getting bored of it something new comes in or something drops out it kind of builds and builds and bills and then drops and bills and bills bills and their drops and then at the end it has a moment which are quite like you don't really notice it happening but it's happening underneath and you just get this feeling of tension release tension release we moved on to another soul we've actually got a cut with them Faith Hill in Tim McGraw that we wrote the same day and then we did another one after that we were a bunch that day oh the lien payment 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 person that the guy sings another verse when 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 you to give this away I don't really know what what what it means to choose a hip I just like writing songs it's not rocket science you know it's much much more complicated kind of the best hour and a half of my life to follow a trend is is a common thing in pop and it's something that I've always tried to not do but I was wrong this time man it's one of the biggest songs of my career we discovered some with the shape of you

Channel: The New York Times

Views: 3,200,197

Rating: 4.9492497 out of 5

Keywords: The New York Times, NY Times, NYT, Times Video, New York Times video, nytimes.com, news, ed sheeran, shape of you, snow patrol, Johnny McDaid, Steve Mac, Kandi Burruss, Tameka Cottle, Briggs, Rihanna, Tionne Watkins, T-Boz, Lisa Lopes, Rozonda Thomas, Chilli, i'm in love with the shape of you, shape of you video, best songs of the year, biggest hit of 2017, 2017 hit, who wrote shape of you, shape of you music video, shape of you lyrics

Id: ZpMNJbt3QDE

Length: 8min 45sec (525 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/littleallred008]

I hope this series never goes away. I absolutely love it.

[u/Crashastern]

You know, I wasn’t ever a big fan of this song, but after seeing this clip it made me appreciate the art behind it, which of course is in all music, and I really enjoyed learning about its construction. Nice find!

[u/sunnycherub]

Also definitely a /r/praisetheanimator for how they visualized the construction of the music