Earlier this week, Ed Sheeran gave metal a major boost in the public eye when he tapped Bring Me the Horizon as the backing band for his eye-popping BRIT Awards performance — even letting frontman Oli Sykes unleash brutal screams onstage at the mainstream event. It was easily one of the most high-profile metalcore collaborations of all time, and as it turns out, the two parties have much more in the works. Today, Sheeran told the Daily Star that he's not only been a longtime fan of Bring Me the Horizon, but that he's actually working on a brand new song with them.
"We're going to write a song together," the global pop phenom told the U.K. publication. "Playing with Bring Me the Horizon was a dream. I got in touch with Oli and we were going to write together but then the pandemic happened, so [now] we're in touch. I've been a fan for a long time."
Sheeran also revealed that it was him who reached out to BMTH for the BRIT Awards collab, which consisted of Sheeran's chart-topping smash hit "Bad Habits" being reshaped into a powerful rock song, replete with a gigantic breakdown that sounded like something off of BMTH's 2013 album, Sempiternal.
"Oddly enough that's the kind of music I grew up listening to," Sheeran enthused about his history with metal. "[I] had a Kerrang! subscription and I listened to it constantly."
That part isn't hard to believe. Last year, Sheeran outed himself as a lifelong metalhead who grew up listening to genuinely extreme bands like Cradle of Filth and Slipknot, and there was even a rumor that he and CoF mastermind Dani Filth had a collaboration in the works (though Filth later told us that there weren't any concrete plans in place).
Regardless, whatever you think of Ed Sheeran's music, there's no denying that his grand endorsement of Bring Me the Horizon is a major boon for metal. Sheeran has millions of fans throughout the world, and if even a small number of them get converted into metalheads because of it, then more power to him.
