Ed and Bey have performed together a few times including singing Drunk In Love at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival. Photo / Getty Images
Ed and Bey have performed together a few times including singing Drunk In Love at the 2015 Global Citizen Festival. Photo / Getty Images
Ed Sheeran asked Beyonce to duet on his hit single Perfect just to see if she would say yes.
The 26-year-old artist may be the biggest pop superstar in the world this year with his third record — yet he admits getting Beyonce on the remix of the song was a pinch-me moment.
Sheeran teased the surprise collaboration just hours before its release on Friday and it quickly raced up the iTunes charts, closing in on the top 10 in Australia within four hours, reports News.com.au.
The original version which dropped in September, remained at No. 1 on iTunes here, and has sold more than 220,000 copies. The song is one of the most streamed tracks of 2017 with more than 400 million plays on Spotify alone.
Sheeran and Beyonce have shared a stage a few times, performing during the Stevie Wonder tribute at the Grammys in 2015 and singing Drunk In Love together at the Global Citizens Festival later that year.
He reportedly played Perfect to her on an acoustic guitar before his third album came out in March and she fell in love with the song.
It surely won't be long before speculation mounts that the king and queen of pop would be Perfect as wedding singers at the reception of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle next year.
"It's something I kinda did just to see whether she would say yes," he told News Corp Australia on Friday.
"I just wanted to see what would happen. I can't believe it, to be honest."
Sheeran revealed the pair finished recording the reworked version in a New York studio, with only themselves and an engineer privy to the session.
He said even he was shocked that they managed to work one-on-one on the song rather than having a crowded studio full of advisers wanting to weigh in on the recording.
"It's a really weird thing, it was just me and her and an engineer, which was very cool," he said.
"To be on-on-one with someone you respect that much and be able to craft the song the way you envision without input from anybody else ... that's rare.
"When there are two people coming together like that, everyone has an opinion, you know."
After the session, Beyonce went on a date night with husband Jay-Z and Sheeran went for drinks with his closest mates but couldn't tell them anything about the secret collaboration.
Beyonce has been busy working with other artists since welcoming her twins, Sir and Remi, in June.
She appeared on a remix of Mi Gente, the Latin smash by J. Balvin and Willy Williams, to raise funds for the hurricane relief efforts in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.
And she recently featured on the new Eminem single Walk on Water which was released a few weeks ago.
Sheeran will return to Australia for his massive stadium tour in March.
He has made no promises to not ride bicycles before his trip Down Under despite having to halt the world tour in October after both arms were broken when he was hit by a car while cycling in London.
