Peak
10
Weeks
30
Score
4,408
Chart Year
2015
An accompanying music video for "Photograph" was released on 9 May 2015. The video is a montage of real home footage. Sheeran sourced the clips from his father, who was then compiling it into DVDs for their family Christmas present.[58] He initially intended the clips for inclusion in a documentary that was being produced around that time; but looking through the collection, he thought it might work for a music video. Sheeran also admitted he could not attend to an actual video shoot, hence he opted for the montage.[59][60] Emil Nava, who had previously worked with Sheeran on his other promotional music videos, directed "Photograph".[23] Editor Ellie Johnson worked with Sheeran's father while in central London. According to Johnson, they spent a weekend gathering the clips used in the montage.[61] The montage chronicles Sheeran's infancy, childhood and adolescence (1990s and 2000s). It features Sheeran playing various music instruments (including piano, cello, bass, acoustic guitar and drums),[23] suggesting that he was musically inclined at a young age.[62] He is also shown displaying his skill in Bodhrán, an Irish frame drum.[63] Other footage depicts a teen Sheeran busking in Galway, Ireland.[64] In another clip before the final, Sheeran is shown performing to a crowd at a festival.[65] Daniel Kreps of Rolling Stone noted that the clips also revealed Sheeran's "lifelong obsession with Legos",[23] an object the latter referenced on his 2011 single "Lego House". According to Ryan Book of the Music Times, the media form utilized in the montage contradicted the song's title.[17] Kreps stated that the video was reminiscent of Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck,[23] a documentary film about Nirvana front man and 1990s rock icon Kurt Cobain. According to Kreps, the private life of both artists in their youth were revealed through real home videos
Sheeran co-penned the song with Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid in a hotel room in Kansas. The pair wrote together while Sheeran supported the band on the North American leg of the band's Fallen Empires Tour in 2012. Five of the tunes they penned made it onto x, (six on the deluxe version). Sheeran recalled the story of the song during a Spotify track by track: "He (McDaid) had a loop of this piano piece just going on and on. I was sat on the floor making a Lego X-Wing Fighter to give to his sister for a charity auction and this piano loop keeps playing, and I start singing a line and the song kind of unraveled from there. We sat for about four hours, me making Lego, and him on the laptop, just building stuff and then I picked up a guitar and we properly structured it." Sheeran described this cut about the pain of love when you're separated from your sweetheart to The Daily Telegraph as his "collateral" song. "If the rest of the album is s--t we can sell it on this one," he explained. Ed Sheeran thought he wrote "Photograph" on 6th Street in Denver, Colorado, so he got a tattoo saying "6 ST." But when he returned to the location, he learned that the street was actually 6th Avenue. The Emil Nava directed music video features footage taken from old family home movies of Ed Sheeran. The clip takes viewers on a journey through the singer's life from a tiny baby and a little kid playing various instruments to a teenager on his guitar and the present day performing in front of huge crowds. Sheeran told Billboard magazine why he chose to go down such a personal route for the video. "A couple of reasons, I had no time to shoot an actual video, and two I was sitting at home at Christmas and my dad had found all the old footage and had it turned into DVDs for our Christmas present and we were looking through them and I thought 'that's amazing stuff," he explained. "We were making a big documentary and so I asked if I could use some of that, and then looking at it I thought this could work for a music video as it was going chronologically so it's cool." The song features on the soundtrack of the romantic drama movie Me Before You. The film is based on the best-selling book by Jojo Moyes. The two songwriters who penned UK X Factor season 10 winner Matt Cardle's 2011 track "Amazing" sued Ed Sheeran for allegedly lifting their melody, rhythm and more for this song. Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard claimed in their lawsuit that "the songs' similarities reach the very essence of the work." The pair added the choruses of both tracks share 39 identical notes, "in pitch, rhythmic duration and placement in the measure." The lawsuit continued: "The similarities go beyond substantial, which is itself sufficient to establish copyright infringement, and are in fact striking. The similarity of words, vocal style, vocal melody, melody, and rhythm are clear indicators, among other things, that 'Photograph' copies 'Amazing.'" Ed Sheeran came to an agreement over the lawsuit with Harrington and Leonard in early April 2017, settling for $20 million (£15 million). Five years later, Sheeran admitted he now regrets settling the copyright case instead of taking it to trial. He feels it opened the floodgates for him to be hit with more lawsuits such as the one for his 2017 smash hit "Shape Of You." Australian singer Jessica Mauboy covered this for The Secret Daughter: Songs from the Original TV Series, the soundtrack to the 2016 Australian miniseries of the same name. The LP debuted at #1 on the Australian ARIA Albums Chart.
Loving can hurt, loving can hurt sometimes But it's the only thing that I know When it gets hard, you know it can get hard sometimes It is the only thing makes us feel alive We keep this love in a photograph We made these memories for ourselves Where our eyes are never closing Hearts are never broken And time's forever frozen, still So you can keep me Inside the pocket of your ripped jeans Holding me closer 'til our eyes meet You won't ever be alone, wait for me to come home Loving can heal, loving can mend your soul And it's the only thing that I know, know I swear it will get easier Remember that with every piece of ya Hmm, and it's the only thing we take with us when we die Hmm, we keep this love in a photograph We made these memories for ourselves Where our eyes are never closing Hearts were never broken And time's forever frozen, still So you can keep me Inside the pocket of your ripped jeans Holding me closer 'til our eyes meet You won't ever be alone And if you hurt me That's okay, baby, only words bleed Inside these pages, you just hold me And I won't ever let you go Wait for me to come home Wait for me to come home Wait for me to come home Wait for me to come home Oh, you can fit me Inside the necklace you got when you were sixteen Next to your heartbeat where I should be Keep it deep within your soul And if you hurt me Well, that's okay, baby, only words bleed Inside these pages, you just hold me And I won't ever let you go When I'm away, I will remember how you kissed me Under the lamppost back on Sixth street Hearing you whisper through the phone "Wait for me to come home"
| Week | Chart Date | Position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | May 30, 2015 | 92 | 34 |
| 2 | Jun 6, 2015 | 58 | 68 |
| 3 | Jun 13, 2015 | 52 | 74 |
| 4 | Jun 20, 2015 | 42 | 84 |
| 5 | Jun 27, 2015 | 41 | 85 |
| 6 | Jul 4, 2015 | 34 | 92 |
| 7 | Jul 11, 2015 | 30 | 96 |
| 8 | Jul 18, 2015 | 25 | 101 |
| 9 | Jul 25, 2015 | 24 | 102 |
| 10 | Aug 1, 2015 | 21 | 105 |
| 11 | Aug 8, 2015 | 20 | 106 |
| 12 | Aug 15, 2015 | 20 | 106 |
| 13 | Aug 22, 2015 | 19 | 107 |
| 14 | Aug 29, 2015 | 15 | 111 |
| 15 | Sep 5, 2015 | 15 | 111 |
| 16 | Sep 12, 2015 | 12 | 114 |
| 17 | Sep 19, 2015 | 12 | 114 |
| 18 | Sep 26, 2015 | 10 | 116 |
| 19 | Oct 3, 2015 | 11 | 115 |
| 20 | Oct 10, 2015 | 13 | 113 |