During his appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Ed Sheeran admitted that he’s “always” working on songs for Rihanna, who he considers has “the best taste.”
Sheeran once thought about giving his massive hit “Shape of You” to Rihanna before keeping it for himself. When Fallon asked about this, Sheeran praised her: “I think, out of any musician, Rihanna has the best taste out of anyone,” he said around the 4:50 mark in the interview above. “She always picks just really, really great songs.”
With many writing credits for other artists, Sheeran is eager to create something for Rihanna eventually. “So, as songwriters, within the songwriting community, you’re always writing songs to pitch to Rihanna,” he explained. “Every single album that I’ve ever done, I’ve always gone to write, on the side, ‘Let’s try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna.’ Like, ‘Love Yourself,’ the one I did for [Justin] Bieber, was originally [with] Rihanna in mind. … I promise you, there’s so many songwriters out there that their best song came from trying to write a Rihanna song.”
He mentioned he initially didn’t feel “Shape of You” suited him when writing it, but after revisions, it worked better. “I had to get my head round it, though, because I very much wrote it with someone else in mind,” he said. Rihanna’s last album was 2016’s Anti, though she released “Lift Me Up” and “Born Again” for the second Black Panther film in 2022.
In the interview, Sheeran also revealed his next album will be titled Play. He explained the title came from an idea at age 18 to release 10 albums, similar to Quentin Tarantino’s plan for ten movies. He suggested future projects would be titled Pause, Rewind, Fast-Forward, and Stop.
Check out the interview below.
