Ed Sheeran "Covers" Love Yourself

Justin Bieber’s hit “Love Yourself” took home the award for Best Lyrics at the 2017 iHeartRadio Music Awards, but it was Ed Sheeran that walked on stage to accept the trophy. That’s because he wrote the song!

“Love Yourself” isn’t the only song Ed has co-written with Justin

The chorus was originally written a tad less family friendly, “If you like the way you look that much/ Oh, baby you should go and f**k yourself.” 

Which explains why he had another singer in mind for the song: Rihanna.

A post shared by badgalriri (@badgalriri) on Mar 4, 2017 at 4:23am PST

Ed told Howard Stern on SiriusXM, he was, “hearing Rihanna… coming in with a bit of that swag… and Rihanna could get away with saying ‘you should go and f**k yourself,’ in my mind anyway.”

But he never pitched the song to Ri-Ri and decided to give it to Justin Bieber instead.

“It kind of came at a zeitgeist time for his career, where he had fallen out of grace with the public, and he had this comeback song that was quite grown-up.”

Well, now we have a chance to hear Ed sing it!

Ed Sheeran did a “cover, kinda,” of “Love Yourself” for a radio station – also called Kiss! – over in England.

“Love Yourself” isn’t the only song Ed has co-written with Justin. He also wrote “Cold Water”, along with One Direction‘s “Little Things”, Hilary Duff‘s “Tattoo”, and Rudimental‘s “Lay It All On Me”.