This month, Apple Music released a documentary called Songwriter.  In the documentary, Ed Sheeran’s cousin follows him around with a camera while making his latest album ÷ (Deluxe).

The trailer looked like it would go through some of the insight of his writing process, so I decided to check it out this morning.  

Sheeran seems like a really nice guy.  There’s a section in the film where Sheeran is walking around his old intermediate school and a girl walking down the hall realizes who he is as they pass and she freaks out.  Sheeran stops and talks to her, even taking a selfie, and then thanking the girl as they part.  That seemed like a shining moment for the man.  

In fact, throughout the film, there are moments were the filmmaker shows how great a guy he seems to be.  And while there are long moments while Sheeran is creating, the majority of the film seems to be focused on Sheeran himself.  Completely understandable and enjoyable if you like the guy, which seems pretty easy with as nice as he is. 

Creative

While it’s very interesting to see how some of these songs were created, there isn’t much in the way of the process.  

The first scene shows Sheeran creating Love Yourself a song he would give to Justin Beiber.  Sheeran and his producer are on the tour bus, messing around with a computer, a guitar, and some chords.  The song forms after a few go-arounds.  They mention that they don’t want it to be a love song, so Sheeran tries to keep it from that with his lyrics.  

Later, Sheeran and his production crew end up in California to write and record some songs.  Sheeran mentions that he’s never really written like this before.  Normally he writes by himself, this time he will be writing with seven other people.  I would have loved it if they had talked about his process here.  

Instead, we see Sheeran beginning to fumble around with the beginnings of a song with his producer, then he just up and leaves and walks outside to another group of musician who seems to be in the middle of writing a song for him.  Sheeran checks out what they are doing and then heads back inside to finish the song he was working on.  

Regardless, we do get to see Sheeran, arguably one of the best songwriters of this generation, in the middle of his process.  I just wish the filmmakers would have addressed the process more.  

Towards the end, Sheeran is asked by the production company to write another song that they feel is lacking on the album.  The next scene, the song is done and they are in the editing stages to make the song done.  Considering I’ve seen a making of for that song on youtube, and it does a great job of showing how the song was made.  But the documentary skipped it completely.

Great advice

My favorite part of the entire thing was when Sheeran went back to his school to see his teacher.  Being a teacher now, it was cool to see how a teacher affected someone so famous, but that’s not my favorite part.

Sheeran’s main purpose for going back is to talk to the teacher’s music class.  Sheeran would actually make a pretty great music teacher because he talks about how he does things and he gives a great analogy.

First, he talks about how he could write a song in 20 minutes, but really its a collection of his observations and notes that he’s taken for years that made it all come together in a that short of time.  He uses his first major song that I heard, The A Team.  He talks about his friends that inspired the song, and how he watched them and made lyrics in his notes on his phone.  He also made notes about rhyming words.  When he sat down to write the song, he had a collection of notes and he just had to put everything together. 

My favorite part of the entire documentary came when he compared writing music to an old dirty water faucet.  He said right now, that’s what you are.  You’re going to turn the faucet and “shit-water” is going to come out, and that’s the water that’s going to come out for a while.  That’s your first work, it’s crap.  As the water continues to flow through, the shit starts to get less and less.  Your work starts getting better.  Eventually, the water will mostly be clean and that’s your good work, but there will be times when shit water comes out again.  

He makes a point of not stopping on the bad, dirty water because if you do the shit has a chance of coming back.  You have to write the bad stuff to get it out.  Just like you’d leave the water on to get the bad stuff out.  

Wrapping it up

If you like Ed Sheeran and his music, it was a pretty good look at the man off the stage and in the writing studio.  

If you are excited about it for the look at the creative process, it’s not the best.  You could look elsewhere.  

It was entertaining though, and the music was good.  

I would not sign up for Apple Music to watch it though.  If you already have Apple Music its a nice perk and I’d check it out.

Also, if you have Apple Music add me!