Image Source: Getty / Frazer Harrison / Mike Marsland
“What would Rihanna do?” is a question that Ed Sheeran asks himself every time he steps inside a recording studio. During his recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, Sheeran mentioned that penning a song for Rihanna remains on his bucket list.
“Rihanna is always the benchmark . . . that’s how ‘Shape of You’ was created, that’s how ‘Love Yourself’ [by] Justin Bieber was created,” he said. “Because Rihanna, she’s got such great taste in songs . . . you can’t say what Rihanna’s style is, it’s just good tunes. So when you go into the studio to create a song, always we go, ‘What would Rihanna do?,’ so she’d be someone I’d always, always want to work with and write with or for.” But his praise didn’t stop there! He added, “The fact that she can do ‘Work’ and then she just does ‘FourFiveSeconds,’ and they’re both totally different but both f*cking incredible tunes.”
Turns out, Sheeran’s wish almost came true a couple years ago. The Grammy-winning artists came close to working together for Sheeran’s No. 6 Collaborations Project, but it ultimately wasn’t the “right tune.” What’s even more interesting is that Sheeran also shared that he submitted songs to Beyoncé for years before “Perfect Duet” happened in 2017. Their ballad topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and it stayed there for five weeks. So the moral of the story is that anything can happen! Fingers crossed that we’ll get a Sheeran and Rihanna collab one of these days — perhaps on her upcoming album?
Watch Sheeran’s full interview on The Breakfast Club below.