Shape of You

With over 5.5 billion views of its official music video on YouTube, and nearly three billion Spotify streams, Ed Sheeran’s 2017 single ‘Shape Of You’ ranks among the most successful songs of all time. Released in January 2017 as the lead single from his third album, ÷, the Grammy Award-winning track reached No.1 in 34 countries. It went on to become 2017’s best-selling song globally, and the most-streamed song of all time on Spotify. The track’s Irish connections are strong. It isn't just that Sheeran – an unabashed member of the Irish diaspora – proudly embraces his Irish roots through his paternal grandparents. Nor that the song contains a reference to Belfast icon Van Morrison (“Put Van the Man on the jukebox”). More vitally, by far, the song was co-written by Derry musician Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, giving a natural-born Irishman a very large stake in one of the biggest songs of this, or any other, era.

The Story Behind The Song

Irish music and Irish musicians were a huge influence on Ed Sheeran as he was growing up. The superstar has described Irish Heartbeat, the album recorded by Van Morrison and The Chieftains, as the record that properly introduced him to music. He is also a fan of Planxty and Christy Moore –and credits the renowned Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice with inspiring a vital formative moment. “Seeing him play this small club in Ireland” Ed told Rolling Stone, “I was able to meet him, and he was unbelievably cool. I went straight home and started writing songs. I would not be doing what I'm doing now if he'd been a jerk.” Ed was just 11 years-of-age at the time.

Having spent most of his teen years soaking up the sounds of his musical heroes, also including Eminem, Nizlopi and The Beatles, Edward Christopher “Ed” Sheeran found global stardom with the release of his first two studio albums, + (2011) and × (2014). Following a notable hiatus over the course of 2016, he returned to the spotlight in January 2017, sharing ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Castle on the Hill’ as the double lead singles from his highly anticipated third album, ÷.

‘Shape of You’ was one of the last tracks written for the album – penned by Sheeran alongside Steve Mac and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, at a session in Rokstone Studios in London. Mac had previously co-written Westlife’s ‘Flying Without Wings’, which Sheeran has described as one of his favourite songs.

Ed Sheeran, on stage in Cork, shot for Hot Press by Miguel Ruiz

“I was a fan of Ed’s before I met him,” Johnny McDaid told Hot Press in 2018. “I’m always writing on the road, so Ed gravitated towards me and my studio – the studio being a laptop, a speaker and a microphone.”

As Sheeran revealed in an interview with BBC Radio 1 shortly after the release, when he wrote the song, he didn't do it with himself in mind as singer.

“We were writing this song and I was like, ‘This would really work for Rihanna’,” he said. “And then I started singing lyrics like ‘Put Van The Man on the jukebox’, and I was like, ‘Well, she’s not really going to sing that, is she?’ And then we sort of decided halfway through that we were just going to make it for me.”

During the songwriting process, there was talk about using a sample from TLC’s ‘No Scrubs’ and the requisite permissions were sought. Nothing from 'No Scrubs' actually made it into 'Shape of You' , but Kandi Burruss, Tameka Cottle and Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs, who wrote the TLC song, were given co-writing credits irrespective. That gesture notwithstanding, with a song this big copyright issues are always a possibility – and thus it came to pass. In March 2022, a case came before the High Court in London, following claims made by the songwriting team of Sami Chokri (a grime artist who trades under the name of Sami Switch) and Ray O'Donoghue that the central "Oh, I" hook of 'Shape of You' is "strikingly similar" to the refrain in the latter's song 'Oh Why?' The claim has been strenuously denied by both Ed Sheeran and Johnny McDaid, with McDaid describing any hint of plagiarism as being a complete anathema to him. In a special report, the American forensic musicologist Anthony Ricigliano concluded that it was "objectively unlikely" that any similarities between the 2017 track and the song 'Oh Why' by Sami Chokri "result from copying”. At the time of writing, the court case is ongoing.

He's the tat's pyjamas! Ed Sheeran, photographed by Dan Martensen

No matter. For now, we can speculate that the case is only happening because both ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Castle on the Hill’ proved instant hits, breaking Spotify’s record for the most ‘day one’ exposure ever, with a combined 13 million streams – the majority 6.8 million of which were clocked up by ‘Shape of You’. In December 2018, ‘Shape of You’ became the first song to hit two billion streams on Spotify. With a current total of nearly three billion streams, the track remains the most-streamed song in the world to date on the now dominant platform.

The single debuted at No.1 around the world, including in the UK, the US and Ireland, and went on to reach the top of the charts in 34 countries. It spent 16 consecutive weeks at No.1 in the Canadian Hot 100, 14 non-consecutive weeks at No.1 in the UK Singles Chart, and 12 non-consecutive weeks at No.1 in the US Billboard Hot 100. As well as being the best-selling song of the decade in the UK, ‘Shape of You’ was the best-selling song of 2017 globally.

An official music video for the track, directed by Jason Koenig, was released in January 2017, starring dancer Jennie Pegouskie and retired sumo wrestler Yamamotoyama Ryūta. The video, which currently has 5.5 billion views on YouTube, is the website’s fourth most-watched video of all time.

Ed Sheeran performing in RTÉ, shot for Hot Press by Kathrin Baumbach

‘Shape of You’ won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Solo Performance in 2018, while ÷ took home the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Ed Sheeran was named Songwriter Of The Year at the 2018 Ivor Novello Awards. In addition, he, Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac were also honoured, snaffling the Ivor Novello Award for Most Performed Work for ‘Shape of You’. Responding to the news, Victor Finn, CEO of the Irish Music Rights Organisation, congratulated McDaid, and described the achievement as “yet another nod to the calibre of music being produced on this island.”

Predictably, there have been dozens of cover versions of ‘Shape of You’, with Jamie Cullum, Japanese pop idol Shizuka Kudo, South Korean YouTube sensation J.Fla, Hawaiian Ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro and US singer-songwriter Judith Owen (wife of Harry Shearer of The Simpsons fame) among those who have taken the plunge. Charli XCX performed the song in drag, as Ed Sheeran, on the US TV show Lip Sync Battle. The official remix of the song features vocals and additional lyrics by London grime artist Stormzy. Major Lazer also released a remix. There is a Zulu version by Ndlovu Youth Choir and Wouter Kellerman. And the song was extensively used in Marks & Spencer ads between 2017 and 2019.

Elsewhere on ÷, and on its deluxe edition, Sheeran celebrated his umbilical ties with Ireland on tracks like ‘Galway Girl’, which starred Saoirse Ronan in a much-viewed video that takes viewers through the streets and into the bars of Galway, and ‘Nancy Mulligan’ – both featuring Irish band Beoga, and both co-written with Foy Vance –a singer-songwriter from Bangor, in Co. Down.

From busking on the streets of Galway as a young teenager, and stealing into Whelan’s in Dublin to see Damien Rice when he was 11, Ed Sheeran has defied the odds to become one of the world’s best-selling artists. As the most-streamed song on Spotify, and one of the most successful singles of all time, ‘Shape of You’ played a central role in getting him there.