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When Ed Sheeran popped up and surprised attendees at Nashville's beloved Tootsie's Bar last week, as well as joining Megan Moroney for a stunning writers’ round at the legendary Bluebird Café, it sparked speculation that the ‘Shape Of You’ singer-songwriter was planning a Post Malone-esque foray into the country music world.
The truth of the matter, of course, is that Britain's Ed Sheeran has been dipping his toes into Music City for over a decade, with the ‘Dive’ hitmaker having penned hits for the likes of Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Kelsea Ballerini and more.
A scan through the ASCAP repertory of registered songs will tell you that this only scratches the surface, with Ed Sheeran having a wealth of unreleased co-writes with country staples.
For instance, Ed Sheeran teamed up with Florida Georgia Line's Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley, as well as Nashville stalwart, Ross Copperman, to pen a track titled ‘Blue Mustang’. Unfortunately, it was never released, but we assume ‘Blue Mustang’ was written in the same session that produced ‘Middle America’, another unreleased track that Sheeran referenced in a 2023 interview with Rolling Stone.
Speaking to Holler while spending time in London ahead of his live-wire C2C Festival 2025 performance, Tyler Hubbard shed some light on what it was like working with Ed Sheeran.
“I love Ed Sheeran”, the ‘Dancin’ in the Country’ crooner gushed, “You know, we've made a lot of memories together, been on tour together. He spent some time in Nashville making music, writing songs, and I was fortunate enough to get in a room with him and write a couple of songs. Yeah, we had a great day. He's a super fast writer, and he has his own process, and we just sort of leaned into what he did”.
Ed Sheeran has built a reputation as one of the most prolific songsmiths in modern music, so it's unsurprising to learn just how quickly Sheeran is able to construct a hit-in-waiting.
Hubbard expanded, “I think in just a few hours, we ended up writing like three songs, because he just spits songs out”, before underlining how much he respects Sheeran, “It was a lot of fun. He's obviously one of the greats, and somebody I admire for many, many reasons. But his creativity and his songwriting skill is next to none, and I was just honoured to be able to be able to be a part of it that day”.
It remains to be seen whether we'll ever get to hear any of the songs that were written during this session. The fact that it featured both Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley suggests it was intended for Florida Georgia Line, and in his 2023 interview, Ed Sheeran implied ‘Middle America’ was written for their album, before being scrapped.
Endearingly, Sheeran appears to be an avid Florida Georgia Line fan, with the multiple Grammy Award winner delivering a playful cover of their record-breaking 2012 smash, ‘Cruise’, during an appearance on The Bobby Bones Show in 2013.
Ed Sheeran is currently gearing up to kickstart a new musical era, seemingly titled Play and featuring the viral unreleased track, ‘Azizam’. We're hoping we can look forward to hearing some country-leaning impulses on the keenly awaited project, and that one day, we'll get to hear ‘Blue Mustang’ and ‘Middle America’ for ourselves.
For more on Tyler Hubbard, see below:
