Ed Sheeran always writes songs with Rihanna in mind

Speaking on 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday (26.03.25), he said: "I think out of any musician, Rihanna has the best taste out of anyone.

"She always picks just really, really great songs. So as songwriters within the songwriting community, you're always writing songs to pitch to Rihanna.

"Like every single album that I've ever done, I've always gone, 'Right let's try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna.' "

Of his and Benny Blanco's 2015 track 'Love yourself', which was recorded by Justin Bieber, he added: "'Love Yourself', actually - the one I did for Bieber - was originally had Rihanna in mind, 'Oh, we should do something for her.'

"I promise you, there'll be so many songwriters out that their best song came from trying to write a Rihanna song."

While Ed's 2017 track 'Shape of You' became the first song to get two billion streams on Spotify and is the platform's second most played tune, with 4.2 billion streams, he admitted he didn't initially intend to record it himself because he "didn't really feel like it suited' his performance style.

He said: "Even though I wrote it, I didn't really feel like it suited me, and I changed little bits about it and produced it with - it's got a lot of acoustic guitar slaps on it, so it sort of sounds like I would do it live, and then it suited me a bit more.

"I had to get my head around it, though, because I very much wrote it with someone else in mind."

The 'Castle on the Hill' singer confirmed his next album will be called 'Play' and explained he's always had a specific 10-record plan in mind after being inspired by director Quentin Tarantino, who has always vowed to only make 10 movies.

He said: "When I was like 18, I had an idea for ten albums, and it was 'Plus', 'Multiply', 'Divide', 'Subtract', 'Equals', and then 'Play', 'Pause', 'Rewind', 'Fast-Forward', 'Stop'. So I've always had - I wanted to do ten.

" I'm kind of a bit obsessed with Tarantino, and I heard he was doing ten films, and he's got his side projects like Grindhouse and s***. So I'm like, I want to do my 10 and, every now and then, do a side project here and then."

And Ed is already thinking about a special compilation he wants to be released after he dies.

Asked if he'll quit making albums after 'Stop', he said: "I kind of want to make an album for the whole of my life where you put, like, different songs on, and then it's in your will that comes out the day you die, and it's called 'Eject'.

"I'm not joking. Imagine when [Paul] McCartney passes away, and there's a record that he's made that there's a song from when he's 16, there's a song from when he's 20, there's a song from when he's 30. It'd be fascinating."