There was only one single that outshined
Justin Bieber's "Sorry" on the 2016 year-end charts: Bieber's own "Love Yourself," the minimalist pop ballad that cemented the young Canadian heartthrob as an adult superstar.
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"Love Yourself" was originally intended for its principal songwriter Ed Sheeran's third album, ÷. Murray Cumming's documentary Songwriter captures the track's genesis on Sheeran's tour bus, including co-writer Benny Blanco's advice to ditch its original chorus ("You should go and fuck yourself") for a cleaner version: "[The song] instantly becomes a classic if you say ‘love yourself,'" Blanco adds, correctly predicting the future.
Though it's the kind of biting kiss-off that Sheeran would soon be known for, "Love Yourself" failed to make the cut for ÷, so Sheeran handed the song to Bieber for Purpose, the pop phenom and OG YouTube superstar's proposed comeback effort following a series of bizarre, boorish incidents that punctured his teen-dream image. Sheeran's sharp words and subdued energy suited Bieber's desire for a more mature persona: it's unclear to what extent he revised the lyrics to "Love Yourself," but the Songwriter footage indicates that Sheeran's original chorus is left virtually untouched in the final product.
Bieber tracked his "Love Yourself" vocals at the Record Plant in Los Angeles. After Philip Beaudreau laid down a lone trumpet for the song's breakdown, it traveled to Henson Recording Studio to be mixed by Josh Gudwin, whose key addition to "Love Yourself" comes from his mitigation of a buzz present in Sheeran and Blanco's original recording - through clever de-noising, the buzz is imperceptible on the final master.
"Love Yourself" was released in December 2015 and supplanted "Sorry" at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 two months later, spending a then-record 24 weeks in the Top Ten. Crushing the American charts was nothing new to Bieber or Blanco, but it was Sheeran's most successful writing credit to date, and the subsequent release of ÷ (and its biggest hit, "Shape of You") made him an inescapable presence on radio and streaming platforms.
~ By Rob Moura for KORD 
