“Hi I’m Ed Sheeran, this is my cover… kinda, of Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself.’” When is a cover not a cover? Well, on Ed Sheeran’s hugely viral performance of Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself,” Ed added a little joke in the intro for fans, because you can’t really cover Justin’s song when you wrote it yourself. We all heard “Love Yourself” a million times on the radio, but if you’re not a Belieber you might not know it was actually Ed Sheeran’s songwriting genius behind one of the Canadian star’s most iconic hits.
And this time around, instead of Justin’s electropop style, we get to hear the anti-breakup anthem in Ed’s solo acoustic style, and let me tell you, it hits so hard like this. The English star really gave a different emotional energy to the song with his version. A number of fans felt like maybe this should have been the studio version all along. The Music Man has to say that nobody does it like Ed Sheeran!
Ed sang his acoustic version of “Love Yourself” for UK radio station Kiss, drawing 15 million views on YouTube. Fans loved Ed’s cheeky joke in the beginning and added comments such as “That moment when you discover that the only song you like from Justin Bieber is written by Ed Sheeran” and “I was gonna say ‘better than the original’ but it’s actually his song so I don’t know what to say now.”
When he’s not being the biggest UK pop sensation in decades, Ed has found quite a bit of time to write songs with other hitmakers. One of his most memorable collabs came when he co-wrote “Everything Has Changed” with Taylor Swift. The pair hit the stage together to perform the song at Taylor’s concert on the Red Tour. I could get used to this lineup because those harmonies are amazing, and Ed’s guitar playing adds so much!
https://youtu.be/Mlf7uq7k1dE
Justin Bieber released “Love Yourself” on November 9, 2015. The song topped the charts in the US and the UK and became Bieber’s third consecutive number one single in both markets. The Music Man readers might be interested to hear that “Love Yourself” was co-written by Ed Sheeran and Benny Blanco on a tour bus in 2015. After penning the melody, Ed’s original idea for the lyrics was “a modern day ‘Mrs. Robinson.’” However, Benny suggested they tap Ed’s stormy love life at the time for more “real” inspiration, which Ed initially resisted. However, Benny convinced him, leading to the lyric “I didn’t wanna write a song.” On paper, “Love Yourself” is credited to Justin, Benny, and Ed. However, it is not clear what, if anything, Justin contributed to the writing of the song.