22 songs you probably didn’t know Ed Sheeran wrote for other popular artists

“Love Yourself” is one of Justin Bieber’s biggest songs. 

In a 2017 interview on “The Howard Stern Show,” Sheeran told the host that the original lyrics to “Love Yourself” actually dropped an expletive instead of: “If you like the way you look that much, oh baby, you should go and love yourself.” 

However, in a 2019 interview with Capital FM, Benny Blanco revealed that he urged Sheeran to rename the cheeky song to “Love Yourself.”

“Certain music needs it, but it’s super corny to me in some songs — in pop songs — when there’s cursing,” he said.

Sheeran and Blanco are both prolific writers and producers, but Blanco didn’t release music under his own name until 2018 with “Eastside,” which also features Khalid and Halsey.

Sheeran, Blanco, Halsey, and Khalid all have songwriting credits on “Eastside” — and all four were named in a 2021 lawsuit that claimed it was a ripoff of a 2015 song called “Loveless” by Konstantine Lois and Shane Williams, per Stereogum. The suit was dropped in 2023.

“I actually wrote a song that I think they might be messing with. I heard this the other day, but I don’t know. I really like BTS, though. I think they’re great,” Sheeran told British website Heatworld in November 2018. 

Then, on December 5, 2018, Suga of BTS posted a mysterious photo of him editing music, which had the English singer tagged in the caption.

The aforementioned song made it on the group’s award-winning 2019 EP, “Map of the Soul: Persona,” as the fourth track.

“Ed sent us this amazingly good song, and as soon as we listened to it, we just couldn’t resist it,” J-Hope, another member of BTS, told Entertainment Weekly in 2021. “We thought it went really well with our image too, so we just went with it.”

“I’m really thankful to Ed Sheeran,” added Jungkook. “I hope we have more chances to work with him.”

“Cold Water,” which also features Justin Bieber and MØ, hit No. 2 on the Hot 100, making it one of the biggest hits of each musician’s career … but Sheeran doesn’t even remember writing it.

“I didn’t even know that song existed,” Sheeran said during a radio appearance on 97.1 AMP Radio in 2017. “It was a song I must’ve half-written somewhere at a time where I was writing a lot of songs.”

You can listen to his original demo here.

“Fallin’ All in You,” which was released on Mendes’ self-titled album in 2018, was cowritten by Sheeran.

During an interview with Zane Lowe, Mendes said that this was the first song he considered for the album, but was concerned about the falsetto.

“He sent me the hook. And it was with falsetto, right? This big falsetto hook. And I remember I looked at the emails and I texted back and I go ‘Hey dude I love this song I don’t — I can’t sing falsetto so, I’m not going to be able to do it,'” he recalled.

“And he goes, ‘Yeah you will. Just wait, you’ll be able to do it.’ And then you know, I tried a bunch of times and it wasn’t until like four months later where I’m like ‘Oh yeah, this amazing song that I can sing,'” Mendes said.

Hilary Duff returned to the music scene with her 2015 album “Breathe In. Breathe Out.” Sheeran helped produce the 10th track, “Tattoo.” He also helped record background vocals, Duff told MTV News.

“I was really intimidated because, normally, they don’t do that, so I kept looking up and being like, ‘You’re Ed Sheeran and I’m singing the song that you wrote and I want to do right by it,'” she said.

In order to work in the studio together, they had to navigate scheduling conflicts and meet in the middle of the night.

“He had been doing a promo day in LA, and he’s like, ‘I know you have a 2-year-old, but could you please come and record at midnight?'” Duff said.

“I was like, ‘I’ve already been in bed for three hours by midnight on most nights,’ but of course for him I did, and I’m such a huge fan — he’s so talented.”

“That wasn’t a calculated move at all. I’m just really good friends with Harry from One Direction,” Sheeran told Watch Mojo about their collaboration. 

“We just used to hang out, and he said, ‘We’re putting together our album. We’re fans of your music. Can you put forward any songs?’ And I had a demo CD of loads of tunes that I was trying to get placed, so I gave it to them, and then it went on their album,” he said.

“It’s got one of my favorite lines that I’ve ever written in a song,” Sheeran said.

He told Capital FM that he loves this line (that Styles sings): “I know you never like the sound of your voice on tape / You never like to know how much you weigh / You still have to squeeze into your jeans but you’re perfect to me.”

“18” was a unique experience for Sheeran because it was the first song he had specifically written for One Direction, instead of for himself. 

“I got a text today saying it’s definitely on the album. I wrote it in a hotel room in Cologne, and I wrote it specifically for them,” Sheeran said in a 2014 interview with Capital FM.

“It’s the first time I’ve done that, so it’s a One Direction song rather than a ‘me’ song that they record. It’s kind of a little bit of everything, it is ballad-y but it is up-tempo at the same time. I wrote it by myself and I first played it to Simon Cowell and he really liked it and then they all heard it and vocalled it.”

“2002” is a single from Anne-Marie’s debut album, “Speak Your Mind,” which was released in April 2018.

Anne-Marie told the New York Post that she and Sheeran met in Paris through mutual friends circa 2010. And ever since, the pair have been working together, whether it was her opening for Sheeran on his 2018 tour or it was harmonizing in the studio together.

“Ed and I have been friends since our teens. It’s brilliant to have the opportunity to collaborate with him for my first single. We definitely click creatively,” the singer told Rolling Stone in May 2017.

While “Your Song” was the first single to be released from her sophomore album “Phoenix,”  it was actually the last to be recorded.

“It was amazing. It happened so randomly because it was really the last song I recorded for my album. I’d been doing my album for about nine months now, back in London, and we were talking about me going to watch his show, and I was like, ‘You know, I’ve got to finish this record,'” Ora told Elvis Duran about working with Sheeran. 

“I said, ‘Look, I’ve got my mates on it, I’ve got my friends on it. I’d really love you to kind of be involved, but I know you’re on a worldwide tour right now, so whatever, maybe next time. And he said, ‘Funny you say that. I just wrote this.'”

“I was in LA at my house. I was in the gym. We were feeling hot. And I got a call and they were like, ‘Ed Sheeran’s in the studio writing this song. It’s about you, it’s for you, so come down and have a listen,’ so I was like ‘Cool, I’m straight in,'” Payne told SiriusXM. 

“I went in with Steve Mac and within 30 minutes we’d finished it off, polished it off. It’s great collaborating when you get to collaborate with people like Sheeran.”

Following Payne’s death in 2024, Sheeran wrote on social media, “At a loss for words. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones, every memory I have with him is a great one, just such a heartbreaking situation.”

Sheeran teamed up with Jess Glynne to write “Woman Like Me” for the British girl group.

“Anything that Ed does is just gold anyway,” Little Mix member Leigh-Anne Pinnock told Women in Pop in 2018. “When ‘Woman Like Me’ came in from [Sheeran] we were just, like, ‘This is wicked!’ Then we went into the studio and tweaked little bits, and made it a little more personal to us.”

Sheeran supported the Swedish singer in the songwriting process for “Don’t Let Me Be Yours,” the ninth track on her second studio album, “So Good,” released in 2017.

“Zara Larsson album out today. We wrote this song together and I love it. Check it out X,” wrote Sheeran on Instagram.

“I got sent it and loved it. It felt like home right away. It’s just such a beautiful, classic melody,” the country singer said about the Sheeran-penned song in a behind-the-scenes video.

“People always think, you know, ‘You’re a guitar player so you’re supposed to shred some sort of solo,’ but I’m always in service of the song, and the electric guitar line, which Ed came up with, is a really great lick. And there’s times you just don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If it’s right, it’s right,” he added of the 2018 song.

The song, which comes off the 2017 album of the same name, reminded Hill of a very specific time in her life.

“I think both Tim and I agree the first time we heard that song,” Hill told CMT News. “It immediately reminded me of us, and the feeling that we had the first time that we admitted and decided that we were going to be married.”

“It’s got such an intimacy to the song, and I think that’s what really attracted us as well,” added McGraw.

The country music power couple has been married since 1996.

“Still Learning” is off the 2020 album “Manic.” The two had worked together before with “Eastside.”

Sheeran worked on the song “Love and Hate” off Ballerini’s 2020 album “Kelsea.”

Ballerini told Entertainment Weekly that she sacrificed her one day off between a TV shoot and tour to fly from LA to Nashville to collaborate with Sheeran.

She recalled he said, “‘Oh, I love that, but what if that was the verse, and we write something even better for the chorus,’ and the chorus just fell out of his mouth.”

Capaldi and Sheeran technically didn’t work on this song together — it was more of a game of telephone.

The cowriters Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac told Capaldi, “‘We’ve got this verse that Ed did if you want to try and have a crack at writing the chorus.’ They were kind of struggling,” Capaldi said during an interview with Big Issue.

He heard it, “tweaked it a little bit, put my stamp on it then wrote the chorus and middle-eight and Bob’s your uncle you’ve got a tune,” he said.

This is one of the most recent songs Sheeran worked on, as the album “Forever” was released in 2024.

Bon Jovi lead singer Jon Bon Jovi called Sheeran “one of the greats” during an interview with People.

“Ed is a sweetheart. I’ve met him over the years a number of times. We were hanging out. He and his wife and babies have come to spend, you know, like the weekend at my house,” he said.

Sheeran is one of 12 credited writers on “Baby Don’t Hurt Me,” which was released in 2023. It was nominated for best dance pop recording at the Grammys, but as only the producers received the nomination, it doesn’t count toward Sheeran’s total number of nominations.