Ellie Goulding says she never dated Ed Sheeran

LONDON, June 3 (UPI) -- Ellie Goulding says she never dated Ed Sheeran.

The 28-year-old English singer asserted as much in an interview for the July issue of Elle U.K. Longstanding rumors claim Goulding cheated on the 24-year-old singer-songwriter with Niall Horan, reportedly inspiring Sheeran's song "Don't."

"I did go on a few dates with Niall, but I was never in a relationship with Ed," she told the magazine. "I have absolutely no idea where that came from and why it was turned into such a big thing."

"I find it so frustrating that female musicians are constantly defined by the men they have or haven't dating," she shared. "It's something I've talked about with Taylor [Swift] a lot. She definitely feels that. She gets bothered by it."

"It's like, you can be this great artist, you can write great songs, but the thing that everyone is going to talk about is some relationship they think you have had or not had," she related. "It's definitely something we both think happens to female artists over male artists."

Sheeran seemed to confirm the same when he spoke to Entertainment Weekly in May. The singer-songwriter was asked if he regrets "letting slip" Goulding and Horan inspired "Don't," and denied he said so in the first place.

"I never let it slip," he declared. "What happened was one of the newspapers in England just printed that it was confirmed when it never was. We got in touch and they took the story down. But obviously the damage had already been done by that point because every other newspaper picked up on it."

Goulding is currently in relationship with McFly bassist Dougie Poynter, whom she said "is definitely the one forever." The singer last released Halcyon in 2012, and recently appeared in Swift's star-studded "Bad Blood" music video with Selena Gomez, Karlie Kloss and more.