Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber have a history of working together, most notably on their hit 2019 joint single “I Don’t Care.” (Sheeran also co-wrote Bieber’s 2015 No. 1 single “Love Yourself.”) They tried to get another track going, too, but it ended up appearing as a Sheeran solo song, “Camera” from his new album Play. There is a version of the song with Bieber floating around, though.
In a recent interview on SiriusXM’s The Morning Mash Up, Sheeran said, “I wrote it for = and then it ended up being a duet with Justin Bieber for Justice, and then it never materialized. I’ve got a version with Justin on it that’s… it’s pretty cool, but it just exists in the ether, and yeah, now it’s out. I think people like it.”
He then said of the song:
“I think the song ‘Camera’ itself is, like, most of the best moments of my life were never caught on camera, and there is something nice about how your mind remembers stuff. I always think this when I look at my kids: When I was 11, I remember playing my first show and thinking that I was rocking out to 40,000 people and it was amazing. Had someone filmed that on a camera phone, takes the magic away, because it’s actually, like, that’s the real life and actually, it wasn’t that good and it was to 20 people in this hall and blah, blah, blah, but I think sometimes when things aren’t caught on camera… Like, I remember my proposal to my wife in a very specific way. It might have actually been completely different if someone had filmed it. I do think that cameras and videoing things sometimes take the magic away.”
Check out clips from the interview above and below.
Play is out now via Gingerbread Man Records/Atlantic Records. Find more information here.