‘Shape of You’ Was 2017’s Biggest Track. Here’s How Ed Sheeran Made It.

‘Shape of You’ Was 2017’s Biggest Track. Here’s How Ed Sheeran Made It.<br />Mr. Mac co-wrote Westlife’s “Flying Without Wings,” which, Mr. Sheeran said, is “one of my favorite songs of all time.”<br />Mr. Sheeran also invited a longtime friend with whom he has written hundreds of songs, Johnny<br />McDaid, a member of Snow Patrol, to the session at Mr. Mac’s Rokstone Studios in West London.<br />“The best songs that I’ve ever written, I don’t really remember writing,” Mr. Sheeran said.<br />As they were working, the collaborators realized that the emerging chorus melody resembled TLC’s 1999 hit “No Scrubs”; at one point they were calling the song-in-progress “TLC.” Mr. Sheeran said<br />that negotiations to add credit for the songwriters of “No Scrubs” — Kandi Burruss, Tameka Cottle and Kevin Briggs — began well before the song was released, but weren’t finalized until after it came out.<br />“I didn’t make this song to be mine to sing,” Mr. Sheeran said.<br />“I don’t think we’ve ever been together and not written a song,” Mr. McDaid said.<br />Mr. Mac came up with the core keyboard riff, playing it with the log-drum sound<br />that happened to be on his synthesizer at the time, hinting at a Caribbean-flavored beat that was already popular: Since the song wasn’t going to be for him, Mr. Sheeran didn’t mind sounding a little derivative.<br />Mr. Sheeran thought he already had enough songs for “÷,” the album he released this year, and he was pondering the final selections.<br />“Like a heartbeat that happens inside it.”<br />The song was taking on a rhythm-and-blues feel; Mr. Sheeran started thinking of it as something<br />for a female harmony group, or as a male-female duet, or maybe a song for Rihanna.