Ed Sheeran doesn’t think ‘Love Yourself’ would be “as big” if he sang it

nme.com:

Ed Sheeran has said he doesn’t think ‘Love Yourself’ would be “as big” if he hadn’t given it to Justin Bieber.The ‘=’ musician co-wrote the single alongside Benny Blanco and Bieber for the latter’s fourth studio album, 2015’s ‘Purpose’.During a conversation with Jack Antonoff about the tracks they’ve written for other artists, Sheeran explained: “I feel like the one that is the slam dunk, whenever I’m at a gig, to play someone else’s song that I had written would be Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself’ because it was so massive for him (via Yahoo!).“I think it’s his biggest song… anywhere in the world, if I picked up a guitar and played that, they’d be like ‘Oh my god, you wrote that!’.”He continued: “People always say, ‘Why didn’t you keep it?’.