11 Years Ago, This Beloved Pop Song Written In Just 10 Minutes Was Climbing Up the Charts
Back in 2012, English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeranwas busy on tour with Irish band, Snow Patrol. Johnny McDaid, instrumentalist and background vocalist for the band, had a three-note piano loop recorded on his laptop. Sheeran began humming the lines, "loving can hurt, loving can hurt" to the loop, and not 10 minutes later, the song Photograph was born.
"I wrote it with Johnny from Snow Patrol and he just had a loop on his laptop that he just put down that was just a three-note piano thing and I just started singing over that 'loving can hurt, loving can hurt', and then the song just kinda fell out within about ten minutes. It was pretty cool," Sheeran said of the writing experience.
"Photograph" was the first "properly" recorded song from what would go on to be Sheeran's second studio album, x (Multiply). The lyrics of the song depict a long distance relationship, which Sheeran was dealing with at the time while on tour. The simplistic style of the acoustic ballad has been widely praised with critics calling it the "lynchpin line of the whole album."
The song was released in May of 2015 as the fifth and final single from x. It peaked at number 10 in the US and went quadruple platinum in the US and the UK. "Photograph" would go on to be one of the top 20 most streamed songs of 2015 according to Spotify.
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Sheeran was well aware he had a hit on his hands saying, "I think ["Photograph"] will be the one that will change my, kind of, career path."
11 years later, the song is still a popular one and for good reason. The simple melody and message is one that anyone can relate to, and continues to withstand the test of time, distance, and the things that bring us together.
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This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 9:10 AM.