"Thinking Out Loud" is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran recorded for his second studio album, × (2014). It was written by Ed Sheeran and Amy Wadge, and produced by frequent collaborator Jake Gosling. It was released in the US on 24 September 2014 as the album's third single.
In the UK, the song spent 19 weeks within the top 40 before peaking at number one in early November 2014; it became Sheeran's second number-one single there. The single has also reached the top spot in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and South Africa, and peaked at number two on both the US Billboard Hot 100 and the Canadian Hot 100. It was Sheeran's highest-charting single in North America until "Shape of You" topped the charts in both countries in 2017.
In June 2015, "Thinking Out Loud" became the first single to spend a full year in the UK top 40. In September 2015, it also became the seventh single to have achieved triple platinum certification in the UK during the 21st century. In October 2015, the song became the first to be streamed over 500 million times on Spotify, is also one of the most streamed songs in the UK and has been viewed more than 3.4 billion times on YouTube as of April 2022.
"Thinking Out Loud" received nominations for Grammy Award for Record of the Year, Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 58th Grammy Awards, winning the latter two.
Background and writing
Sheeran wrote "Thinking Out Loud" with Amy Wadge, a Wales-based singer-songwriter. He met Wadge when he was 17 years old and they had since written several songs together. Of these, five songs composed the extended play Songs I Wrote with Amy, which Sheeran independently released on 4 April 2010. Wadge also co-wrote the song "Gold Rush", a track on the deluxe version of Sheeran's debut album, + (2011).
In February 2014, Wadge visited Sheeran at home for a "chilling-out time". Around that time, Sheeran's second studio album, ×, was nearly completed. Wadge revealed that her visit was not supposed to be a songwriting session. While Sheeran was taking a shower, Wadge played a few chords on a guitar. The tune caught the attention of Sheeran and he ran downstairs. Sheeran suggested working with the tune, but only after returning home from dinner, work began. The melody developed from a simple riff. According to Sheeran, he composed the melody on a guitar in a manner which was "very Van-like", referring to Van Morrison. The Irish musician has been an inspiration to Sheeran since a young age, and Sheeran wanted to capture that vibe when he composed the song.
In the kitchen, Sheeran and Wadge began writing the song at 2:00am on 4 February 2014, and completed it in 20 minutes. According to Wadge, the lyrical content resulted from her and Sheeran's talking about "everlasting love", inspired by the circumstances relevant at that time. Sheeran also revealed that the lyrics were inspired by his then-girlfriend, Athina Andrelos, whom Sheeran met in early 2014. Sheeran would later explain that he wrote the song "in a relationship at a really, really happy point". Sheeran revealed that he also had his grandparents in mind and maintaining love in old age ("'til we're 70" in the lyrics), and the early version of the chorus was "I'm singing out now" before it became "I'm thinking out loud". Immediately after writing, Sheeran recorded the song on his phone. He was keen to include "Thinking Out Loud" on the second album. He properly recorded the song the following day at the Sticky Studios, a recording facility located in the small Surrey village of Windlesham, and informed Wadge of its inclusion on the album. It became the last song recorded for the album. For "Thinking Out Loud", Sheeran sought the assistance of Jake Gosling, who produced much of his debut album and had earlier contributed tracks, four of which appear on the standard version of the second album.
Composition
"Thinking Out Loud" is a romantic ballad with blue-eyed soul influences. Sheeran referred to it as a "walking down the aisle song". In the lyrics, Sheeran reflects on "getting older and fidelity and love in a fairly conventional context", according to Eric Clarke, professor of music at University of Oxford.
The song was composed in the key of D major with a tempo of 79 beats per minute. Sheeran's vocals range from B2 to A4. In the mix, Sheeran's voice is "unusually" loud over the instruments, which, for Mike Senior of the music technology magazine, Sound on Sound, is "surprisingly rare" in contemporary records. Senior analysed the vocal elements in which he found that, in spite of several notes sung off pitch, "the overall framework of the vocal remains fundamentally in tune".