Greg WilliamsThis Sunday, Ed Sheeran will be the guest on Desert Island Discs, a BBC Radio show where artists talk about which records they’d bring with them to a desert island. In an advance clip from the show, Ed reveals that he writes an amazing amount of songs for each album, but very few of them are actually keepers.
“I try to write as much as possible,” he explains. “If I’m in album making mode, it’ll be four or five songs a day and there’ll be no thought process. It’ll just be ‘Get a guitar and write a song.'”
But, he points out, “12 out of 100 might be good. So yeah, I write a bunch and scrap a bunch.”
Ed also discusses the fact that writing songs is something that cheers him up when he’s feeling depressed.
“I think it’s a form of therapy, to be honest,” he says. “I think every time I’ve ever got down or ever felt low, the one thing that picks me up from that is writing a song about it.”
But why does that make him feel better? He explains, “[Because] at least you’ve got a positive experience out of a bad experience, or something really happy. Y’know, you can write a really happy song, and that’s an even better thing.”
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