Ed Sheeran wasn’t taking a no for an answer when Justin Bieber first rejected his I Don’t Care music video.
During his August 20 concert at Toronto’s Rogers Centre, the first of three nights on his Loop Tour, the Perfect revealed his pitch and clever idea that convinced Justin to film the music video.
“He wasn’t working, wasn’t singing, wasn’t doing shows, wasn’t making music videos, wasn’t doing anything,” Sheeran told the Toronto crowd, recalling how he approached the Baby hitmaker about the song.
Recalling the unlikely back-and-forth, the Sapphire singer asked Bieber, “Are you going to sing my song?”
He agreed. So far, so good. But Sheeran had one more request. “Would you be in a music video?” he asked.
Bieber’s response was considerably less enthusiastic: “Absolutely not.”
So when the pop star agreed to sing on the song but refused to appear in its music video, Sheeran simply came up with another plan.
Rather than abandon the idea, he went on to propose, “What if I come to your house, with a green screen, for 20 minutes, with some costumes? We dress up weirdly and make a video.”
And the Stay singer approved the idea. The story offers a glimpse into just how much convincing went into getting Bieber involved in I Don’t Care, which was released in 2019 as the lead single from Sheeran’s No. 6 Collaborations Project.
The song eventually became a major hit, bringing the two singers together again after Sheeran had helped co-write Bieber’s 2015 hit “Love Yourself.”
