Ed Sheeran and Bring Me The Horizon are going to collaborate on new music

Ed Sheeran and Oli Sykes onstage art the BRITS

(Image credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Ed Sheeran has described his surprise Brit Awards collaboration with Bring Me The Horizon as “a dream” and revealed that he is planning to write new music with the Yorkshire metalcore crew, saying “I've been a fan for a long time.”

Interviewed at the awards ceremony for the Daily Star’s Wired column, singer/songwriter Sheeran once again referenced his upbringing as a teenage ‘metalhead’ and said that he’s been in contact with BMTH frontman Oli Sykes for a couple of years.

"We're going to write a song together,” he told the newspaper.

"I got in touch with [Sykes] and we were going to write together but then the pandemic happened,” Sheeran says. “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.”

Sheeran says that the idea of the BRITS collaboration originated just two weeks ago, and was hatched during an email exchange with Sykes.

“The song is EDM and they've taken it and made it a whole new thing,” he says. “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.”

Sheeran’s fondness for heavier music seems to be genuine, as he’s previously discussed listening to Slipknot and Cradle of Filth as a teenager.

Last year, Dani Filth revealed to Kerrang! Radio that he’d been in touch with Sheeran after learning that the singer/songwriter was a fan.

“I’ve actually been emailing with him,” Filth said. “No no, it’s true! He actually touched base with me. 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.

“Fellow Suffolk lad could come good in the end,” he added. “Dracula’s Castle On The Hill, anyone?”

Given that Dani Filth and Oli Sykes are also friends, having previously collaborated on BMTH’s Wonderful Life, we're ruling nothing out.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.