Thinking Out Loud: The Wedding Anthem About Growing Old Together

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

Thinking Out Loud, from Ed Sheeran’s 2014 album × (“Multiply”), became one of the defining wedding songs of its generation by tackling the least flashy and most demanding kind of love: the long kind. It’s a vow to keep loving someone into old age — when bodies fail, memories fade and youth is long gone — insisting that the feeling will outlast all of it.

Love as endurance

That’s a braver subject than the usual rush of new romance. Plenty of songs capture falling in love; far fewer try to capture staying in it for a lifetime, all the way to the end. By imagining the couple grown old and frail and still devoted, Sheeran tapped something couples genuinely want to promise each other — which is exactly why it became a first-dance fixture worldwide.

The soul influence, and a court case

Musically it wears its classic-soul influences openly, with a warm, slow-dancing groove. That lineage later drew it into a high-profile copyright case alleging it leaned too close to a Marvin Gaye classic — a suit Sheeran ultimately won. The episode became part of the modern story of how the biggest hits now get litigated for their debts to the past.

What it measures like

On our measurements it’s warm and mid-tempo — a gentle, soulful, swaying groove built for a slow dance. Full profile on its song page.

Thinking Out Loud appears on Ed Sheeran’s 2014 album ×; the copyright case comparing it to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” was ultimately decided in Sheeran’s favor. Readings of the lyric are presented as interpretation. No lyrics are reproduced.