Ed Sheeran shares two opposites from his collaborations album
Ed Sheeran is in full promotional mode for his upcoming No. 6 Collaborations Project out on the 12th of July. After dropping thehit single ‘I Don’t Care’ with Justin Bieber, a tune with Chance the Rapper and last week’s ‘Beautiful People’ with Khalid, this week’s picks, ‘BLOW’ and ‘Best Part of Me’ feature Bruno Mars, Chris Stapleton and YEBBA.

‘Best Part of Me’ is a stripped back duet with soul and pop singer YEBBA, who recently released an absolute banger with Mark Ronson. In the Ed Sheeran universe, the YEBBA duet is definitely close to songs like ‘Perfect’ and ‘Thinking Out Loud’, be it with a bit more of a subtle country twang. Vocally both Sheeran and YEBBA excel and their vocals together sound admittedly heavenly. I personally find the lyrics of the chorus quite bland and underwhelming, but I thought the same about ‘Perfect’ and that somehow resonated with a massive crowd.

Now for ‘BLOW’ Sheeran finally majorly shakes things up and it therefore is the most interesting thing he has recorded in quite a while. The track opens with loud rocking guitars and prominent drums. Sheeran takes on the first verse, using his vocals in full force. Country star Chris Stapleton rocks on the second one and Bruno Mars holds his own surprisingly well on a track that you would not really picture him on at first. The chorus is explosive, the production loud, but never overpowers the quality of the hook of the chorus. It pushes Sheeran out of his comfort zone as an artist and that is the best that could happen on a collaborations project like this.