Ed Sheeran Also Has Something to Say About the Taylor Swift-Nicki Minaj Drama

Looks like Ed Sheeran was thinking out loud about the recent Twitter drama involving Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry and the MTV Video Music Awards.

The now eight-time VMA nominee stood up for his pal Swift in a recent interview after she took Minaj’s criticism of the award show as a personal attack. “I think everyone knows that Taylor has done nothing wrong in that situation,” Sheeran told the Daily Telegraph. “She didn’t nominate herself for the awards. She just made some good videos and people think they’re good.”

Earlier this week Minaj said the lack of a Video of the Year nomination for “Anaconda” was the latest instance of pop culture ignoring the contributions of black women. “If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies, you will be nominated for vid of the year,” she tweeted with a bunch of smiley-face emojis. Swift fired back with a tweet about the importance of not pitting women against each other that was widely criticized for derailing Minaj’s point to…ultimately pit women against each other. (Later, Katy Perry got involved, providing endless opportunities to make “Bad Blood” jokes.)

In the interview, Sheeran called Minaj’s argument “a bit redundant.” “Her point is that you have to be skinny and white to get a Video of the Year nomination,” he says, “but Beyoncé’s ‘7/11’ is in there, and that is celebrating the female figure in every form.” He later tried to say his comments were taken out of context and that he wasn’t talking about race—a little suspect, given his explicit reference to whiteness above—but apologized for not expressing his Swift support more eloquently.

“I was making a point about body image and not race, whilst sticking up for a mate,” he tweeted. “I definitely said it wrong though, apologies.”