Ed Sheeran Says His “End Goal” is to Make a Country Album: What Will He Bring to the Genre?

During his recent appearance on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast, Ed Sheeran declared something that, if we're being honest, we've all suspected for years now.

The ‘Shape of You’ hitmaker revealed that it's his “end goal” to move back to Nashville and make the well-worn journey from pop into country music. With a seemingly endless flurry of mainstream chart-toppers venturing into the genre over the past year, such as Beyoncé, Post Malone, Chappell Roan and Lana Del Rey, some fans have immediately dismissed Sheeran's remarks as “jumping on the bandwagon”.

It's true that country is enjoying immense popularity, and undoubtedly presents an attractive - and lucrative - proposition to pop artists looking to entice a brand new audience.

However, it's also evident that Ed Sheeran is not simply following today's cowboy-core, Western-wave trend. For starters, the British phenom has been writing hits for the likes of Kenny Chesney, Keith Urban, Tim McGraw and Kelsea Ballerini for years, with Nashville heavyweights often leaning heavily on Sheeran's revered pen.

In a 2023 interview ahead of delivering his blockbuster Luke Combs duet, ‘Life Goes On’, at the ACM Awards, Ed Sheeran underlined how he's been a huge country fan for years, endearingly explaining that he and his wife listen to country radio all day long.

Of course, the country world is famously protective over its genre boundary-lines, and we've been burned in the past by disappointing pop-country crossover projects.

Despite taking home the Grammy for Album of the Year, Beyoncé's COWBOY CARTER was much-maligned within Music City, partly due to the global megastar's perceived refusal to embrace Nashville, instead making the record from a distance.

Post Malone's F-1Trillion rollout, meanwhile, arguably serves as the touchstone for how to ‘go country’. Post immersed himself in Nashville's songwriting culture and performed at an array of hallowed venues, from the Opry to the Ryman to the Bluebird Cafe.

Although, in reality, there's no one-size-fits-all formula for going country, it seems Ed Sheeran shares Post Malone's attitude, with the ‘Thinking Out Loud’ crooner making it clear to Alex Cooper that he understands that you have to go all-in, “Nashville is, like, my favourite city in the States. It’s always been my end goal. I’m going to move to Nashville and transition to country, but I think you just have to do it properly. It’s a genre you have to really respect, and it’s not just a dip in and out”.

Last month, Ed Sheeran made his Bluebird Cafe debut, inviting Megan Moroney to perform alongside him, with Sheeran hailing it as a dream of his to play the iconic venue.

Elsewhere during his Call Her Daddy discussion, Ed Sheeran reflected, “I’ve made country songs in the past; they’ve just never come out. I have to do it properly, and once you transition to country, you can’t transition back. Once you’re there, you’re there”.

The other big ‘ick’, so to speak, that country listeners experience when a non-country artist tries their hand at the genre, is when they reel off a checklist of surface-level tropes. This sometimes feels a little unfair, given many artists within country don't dig much further than the standard ‘truck, beer, hunting, whiskey’ cliches.

But either way, the bar is often higher for country music's ‘outsiders’, and Ed Sheeran will have no doubt invited a few eye-rolls from traditionalists when they saw him donning a pink cowboy hat, as he performed at Nashville's Tootsies Bar on Broadway.

This is perhaps more an issue with UK country artists, rather than pop acts going country. One of the reasons there have not been many success stories from the other side of The Pond, aside from The Shires, is that too often it feels like country cosplay.

It just ends up feeling insincere when someone from Central London puts on a cowboy hat and a false drawl, and attempts to sell country music back to the nation that invented it.

In order for it to work, it has to be authentic. And actually - pink cowboy hat aside - we think Ed Sheeran will deliver on this front too. When chatting to Alex Cooper, he outlined, “My heritage is sort of Anglo-Irish, I grew up with trad music in my household. I think it would have to be a little twinge of that. I think I'd have to bring Irish trad music into country, because it's all...it's the same instruments anyway”.

Sheeran has explored this vein on a slew of stand-outs from his stellar discography, such as the fiddle-driven ‘Galway Girl’ and ‘Nancy Mulligan’, and we'd love to hear a country sound infused by traditional Irish folk music in the mould of The Dubliners. This isn't something we get to enjoy on contemporary Country Radio, and would offer a fresh spin on the genre that feels true to Sheeran's upbringing - rather than simply being an attempt at mimicking what's currently popular.

By the same token, should Ed Sheeran stick to his word and drop a country record in the future, we imagine he'll leave plenty of room for experimentation. Sheeran is one of the most prolific songwriters of the modern era, and we've seen him dabble in Southern Rock on ‘BLOW’ with Chris Stapleton and Bruno Mars, as well as opting for sumptuously sparse, folk-leaning arrangements on the likes of ‘Save Myself’.

Ed Sheeran always makes an effort to incorporate different cultural strands into his sound, epitomised on his new single, ’Azizam’, which leads with the Persian phrase for ‘My Love’. Sheeran sings in Ghanaian on ‘Bibia Be Ye Ye’, dances through the streets of Catalonia on ‘Barcelona’ and toasts Latin America on ‘South of the Border’. Therefore, we wouldn't be surprised if, similarly to Post Malone, Sheeran draws inspiration from an eclectic plethora of country-adjacent sub-genres, ranging from Appalachian Folk to Red Dirt and a host of other styles in-between.

What's more, given the fact that he is good buddies with a pantheon of country trailblazers, including Luke Combs, Taylor Swift and Kelsea Ballerini, we suspect there will be room for plenty of star-studded collaborations on Ed Sheeran's country album.

All that's to say, despite inevitable skepticism from some factions of the genre, we believe a foray into country music from Ed Sheeran would bring a refreshing, unique sound into Nashville, which could pave the way for more UK country acts. Alas, with Sheeran currently gearing up for his next album, Play, with the release of the infectious ’Azizam’ last week, we don't think he'll be dropping a country project any time soon. But rest assured when he does, it'll be well worth the wait.

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