Ed Sheeran

Story of Song

Sheeran wrote this love song about his girlfriend, Athina Andrelos, who works for English celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. He wrote it with his friend Amy Wadge and he penned it in the kitchen.

Sheeran said while performing on stage in Ireland: “With this next song, this was never meant to be on the album. The album was completely done, finished, mixed, handed in and all the artwork was done. And.. I was having a break, I was having like a week off… My friend Amy who I wrote some songs with, came up to my house to listen to the album and we were meant to go out for dinner that night. I went up upstairs and showered then came back downstairs and she had picked up a guitar and she was just strumming these chords and I thought that sounds really nice. I was brought up in sort of a Van Morrison music, and what is very common in Van Morrison’s music is that him just doing random words, anything.. So over these chords I was just kind of (Scatting)… the song then kind of took shape. I remember recording it and being like ‘Wicked I’ve got a song for the third album’ and really thinking anything of it, and the more I listen to it, I’m like’ right! Maybe there’s something in this song.’ I recorded it and it just ended up on the album. The album was released and it went into the charts without radio playing, and it just stood there for ages and it was my second number 1 here in Ireland”. Ed Sheeran wanted to look good for the video, so he lost 35 pounds, mainly by giving up beer.

Release date

This romantic song was released on September 24, 2014

Songwriter/s

Ed Sheeran, Amy Wadge

Label

Asylum – Atlantic

Chart Rankings

US – 2

UK – 1

GERMANY – 6

Thinking Out Loud broke the record for the most streams in a chart week in the UK, when it was streamed 1.72 million times in November, 2014.
The record was broken a month later by Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk which achieved 2.34 million streams. It topped the UK singles charts in its 19th week, after an amazing performance by Sheeran on the X Factor live show. It broke the record for the slowest continual climb to number 1, overtaking the 16-week climb The Power Of Love by Jennifer Rush and Celine Dion’s Think Twice. Thinking Out Loud became the first to spend a full year inside the UK Top 40 beating Pharrell Williams’ Happy, which spent 49 consecutive weeks on the Top 40. It also topped the charts in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Portugal, Denmark, South Africa and the United Kingdom, while reaching the top ten in several other countries including the United States, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Norway, Czech Republic, Belgium, Spain, France, Poland and Austria. The song spent 20 weeks in the UK top 10.