Following their explosive joint performance of Bad Habits at the 2022 Brit Awards earlier this week (February 8), Ed Sheeran and Bring Me The Horizon are planning to work together on new music.
Calling his performance with the Sheffield, England quintet "a dream," Sheeran told the Daily Star (via Louder) that he plans to write a song with the band.
"I got in touch with [Oliver Sykes, Bring Me The Horizon's frontman] and we were going to write together but then the pandemic happened,” Sheeran said. “So we were in touch – I've been a fan for a long time. Oddly enough that's the kind of music I grew up listening to – [I] had a Kerrang! subscription and I listened to it constantly.”
The record-shattering pop superstar also revealed that plans for the collaborative performance were hatched just two weeks ago.
“The song is EDM and they've taken it and made it a whole new thing,” Sheeran said. “I was just like, you know what, these guitars are going to be great. It was a week's turnaround – we emailed each other two weeks ago, recorded it a week ago and rehearsed it three days ago.”
Perhaps the performance shouldn't have come as too much of a surprise, given how vocal Sheeran's been about his metalhead roots, and his openness to re-connecting with them musically.
Last July, he told The Sun that he was "not opposed to” making a death metal album, citing his love of bands like Slipknot and Cradle of Filth. A month later, Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth revealed that he had been emailing with Sheeran about a potential collaboration.
“He actually touched base with me,” Filth told Kerrang! backstage at Bloodstock 2021 (as reported by Planet Rock). “I've been invited up to his place. Well, he said he could come down to mine, but I pointed out to him that I don't own my own bar or village, and it'd be better if I went there. He said he'd do anything. Quite literally. He said he's a massive fan. He seems like a genuinely very nice guy actually.
“I think the Ed Sheeran collaboration would be great fun," he continued. "I think it'd be great if we did it for charity because at least it would bring a bit of credibility to it. Because obviously to his public, it'd be like ‘Oh my god, he's got this weird comical guy’, and to my public, it'd be like ‘Oh my god, this is a bit weird isn't it?’ But I think that sort of thing, nowadays, works.”
Though not to everyone's taste certainly, we have to tip our hats to Sheeran for shaking things up, and giving one of his most inescapable pop hits a confrontational, high-volume makeover, and we'd be fascinated to hear what a studio collaboration between him and Bring Me the Horizon or Cradle of Filth would bring to the table.
It wouldn't be Bring Me the Horizon's first high-profile collab – just four months ago, the band teamed up with Tom Morello for the heavy-riffing Let's Get the Party Started.
