“It’s fascinating how many people are interested in that. It happened nine years ago,” Ellie Goulding tells Daily Mail of the rumors of infidelity between her, Ed Sheeran, and One Direction’s Niall Horan. It’s been speculated that Ellie, 36, dated Ed, 32, and that their relationship fell apart when she allegedly slept with Niall, 29, with fans suspecting Ed’s 2014 song “Don’t” was about her. Ellie says that such a scenario was the farthest thing from the truth. “You know, completely honestly, [the rumors] caused me a huge amount of… stress is not the word. It caused me a lot of trauma, actually.”
Ellie stressed that she never dated Ed in the first place. The alleged romance was thrust back into the spotlight when she responded to a TikTok user’s comment about the rumors (“Can’t believe u cheated on Ed with Niall, but slay [for real]”) with a resounding “False!!!!! But also slay.”
“How old were we, 23?” she asked the Daily Mail. “I envy the fact that my friends just spent their 20s having flings and one-night stands and what every 20-something goes through in private. But every single thing I did was written about. I was made to feel like a terrible person, and I really struggled with that because I know I’m not.” As for her talking to Ed personally about the allegations? “Of course! It is in the past, and we’re friends. We’re adults.”
Goulding also noted the scrutiny on her personal life that prompted her five-year break between her albums – 2015’s Delirium and 2020’s Brightest Blue. “I can laugh about it now, but it changed things for me,’ she told the Mail. “I became kind of reclusive. I didn’t want to perform. That’s why I wrote that comment because every day I get comments about this stupid teenage situation. It was nothing, and it was private – and it caused me such a huge amount of grief, and I resent it.”
“It is not a normal job to be photographed every day, to be on television, to be doing photoshoots with 1,000 people watching you while they tell you to do weird poses,” she added. “It’s not normal to be scrutinized for your lyrics. I watch politicians and wonder how they manage to hack it.”
Ed would say differently in a 2013 interview. After he and Ellie were spotted holding hands at that year’s MTV Video Music Awards, he spoke with Washington radio station Click 98.9 (per Us Weekly). “I mean, normal people don’t hold hands if they’re just friends,” he said. “It was going on. And now it’s not.”
Ed’s comments came after Ellie tweeted a response about the rumors over the hand-holding. “I love that holding hands with my friends means we’re an item,” she wrote. “In that case, I am in many relationships. Lover not a hater. #whatthef*ck.”