Mark SurridgeWe might have LEGO to thank for Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You.”
In a New York Times article breaking down the making of the hit song, Ed’s songwriting partner, Johnny McDaid, says the key to keeping Ed’s attention during songwriting session is a LEGO set.
“His attention span can be fairly low,” Johnny says. “One of the things I did to keep him in the room while I’d be working on a track, I would have like a suitcase full of LEGO I’d pull into the hotel room.”
Johnny adds, “I’d say, ‘There you go, you build that,’ and it was great ’cause he’d sit and build the LEGO, and kind of get lost in that world for a second, and then come back and come up with this moment that was everything.”
The song “Shape of You,” which was also co-written by producer Steve Mac, manifested itself in about 90 minutes. Ed came up with the phrase “I’m in love with your body,” and Johnny suggested adding the phrase “the shape of you” to make the song less objectifying.
While they initially wrote the song for another artist — Ed was thinking of it as a duet between Rudimental and Rihanna — the president of Atlantic UK, Ben Cook, thought otherwise.
“He was kind of just looking at me,” Ed says. “Like, ‘Why do you want to give this away?’”
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