English singer Ed Sheeran shot to the top of the music chart in the US after he got a little help from Beyonce in the latest single “Perfect.”
The romantic ballad was originally released in September as a the fourth solo single from his critically-acclaimed album “Divide.”
Sheeran said that Beyonce loved the song “Perfect” so much that he decided to record a duet version. This is Sheeran’s second No. 1 song in the US, the first one being “Shape of You.”
The song “Shape of You” has been named the biggest-selling tune of 2017, according to Billboard magazine’s year-end countdown.
For the song “Perfect,” Sheeran reached out to Queen B who recorded the second verse of the song from a female perspective. The pop superstars hit the recording studio in May.
Reports said that an operatic version of the song with Andrea Bocelli will be released on Dec. 15.
“Perfect” shot to the summit of Billboard’s Hot 100 songs for the week ending Dec. 23. Its original version has reached No. 1 in Austria, Belgium, Europe, France, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Netherlands, Philippines, Poland, Scotland, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Switzerland.
The “Perfect” duet also reached number one in New Zealand, Germany, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and the United States.
“Perfect” edged out “Rockstar” by American rapper Post Malone featuring 21 Savage on the Hot 100 chart where it has been at No. 1 for several weeks now.
“Whereas there’s other things where stuff was completely unexpected. Like getting Beyoncé on the remix of ‘Perfect,’ that was something that just happened. So it’s been like a year of when one door closes, another one opens,” said Sheeran in an interview on Billboard.com.
“I started the year with my first-ever Hot 100 No. 1 with ‘Shape’ and I’m ending the year with my second ever Hot 100 No. 1, and I think it’s like, especially now in these streaming times, albums basically go up and down so quickly and it’s so hard to have campaigns nowadays, so to be able to have an album that came out in March and it’s still top 10 and still having a hit single like ‘Perfect’ is, I just have to kind of give it up for Atlantic Records. I mean they’re very, very, very good at their jobs.”
Sheeran, 26, told BBC Radio 2 that he wrote the love song for his girlfriend Cherry Seaborn, who is an old school friend. “I just recorded it and sent it because she was living in New York at the time so I didn’t see her reaction.
I think she liked it, it’s a good’un (good one).’’
The “How Would You Feel” singer also said that he penned the song to beat one of the biggest songs of his career.
“I just wanted to beat ‘Thinking Out Loud’. I wasn’t in any other mind. I wanted to beat ‘Thinking Out Loud’ because I know that song was gonna define me and that was gonna be the song in fifty years like when you have one song like that you’re that artist but when you have two or three songs like that that’s when you start to be like Van Morrison,” Sheeran told Beats 1’s Zane Lowe.
