Out from rock star's third album (Divide), the song surpassed the benchmark this festive month (December 22), first after appearing on the streaming platform in January of 2017. However, this is not Sheeran's first Spotify milestone; many of his songs, notably Castle On The Hill, Happier, Galway Girl, I Don't Care, and Beautiful People, have surpassed the one billion benchmark. Thereby earning slots on Spotify's Billionaire League category.
As Sheeran’s Shape of You crossed the benchmark of 3 million hits, he wanted ‘Caste On The Hill’ to be his single but fate had other plans, and the original song became popular and managed to break history on Spotify.
Sheeran thanked Spotify for their togetherness for ten years and hoped they would continue to grow and support each other. Sheeran has attributed his success to his mate Ben Cook who intervened on time and made Shape of You the single of the Divide album. Cook was shown to be correct. Shape of You is one of Sheeran's most successful hits, lasting 59 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 list, including 12 weeks at number one. It reached the top of the charts in over 34 nations, including Australia and the United Kingdom.
The song much like most modern pop successes, was composed in a brainstorming process, when ideas are produced or abandoned quickly, with laptops and equipment around and recordings playing. Sheeran doesn't recall composing the finest song ever written. He also added that they were done with the song's composition in 20 minutes, according to Independent.
Shape of You got underway fifteen minutes after Sheeran met Mr. Mac in the studio. Mr. Mac created the main synthesizer melody, mixing this with the log-drum effect that occurred to be on his synthesizer at the moment, alluding at such an existing famous Caribbean-flavored beat: Sheeran did not mind sounding a little unoriginal because the song wasn't going to be for him.
Sheeran goes solo at his performances with a loop machine, singing and then stacking all of the sections live; he also develops songs in this manner, piling and layering ideas. Around the keyboard rhythm and guitar tapping, they added plucked strings, backing vocal phrases, and a kick drum. They were, however, cautious not to overburden the song, according to New York Times.
That day, they composed four additional songs for various artists, including Liam Payne, DJ Snake, and a duet for Faith Hill and Tim McGraw. Sheeran felt Shape of You was beautiful, and it may work for Rudimental, who, like Mr. Sheeran, is signed to Atlantic Records potentially like a duo with Rihanna.
Sources: Independent, New York Times