'I emailed him,' Sheeran says on how he got Mayer to agree to an uncredited guitar solo.
If you listen closely to Ed Sheeran's new album, you might just hear a little John Mayer. Well, a guitar solo by Mayer, anyway.
Sheeran, who performed with Mayer at the 2015 GRAMMYs, as well as on The Late Late Show that year, revealed that the 39-year-old musician collaborated on his new album, ÷.
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"I got John Mayer on a guitar solo that's uncredited that's quite cool," Sheeran announced during an interview with WestWoodOne's Zach Sang Show on Friday. "I did a really terrible guitar solo on a song and I was like, 'I bet John Mayer could do this better.' So I emailed him and he did it a lot better."
Sheeran's new album, ÷ (pronounced "divide") marks his first record since his GRAMMY-nominated sophomore effort, x (pronounced "multiply"), in 2014. In addition to a brief pause from music, the 25-year-old singer also took a year-long break from social media, which he attributes to not knowing how to deal with fame.
"I'm still a pretty simple person anyway, so I'm still living in simpler times. Fame is like, you just have to find a way to deal with it in your own way, and the reason I took the break is I didn't know how to deal with it so I wasn't really enjoying it," he explained.
"I've now kind of recharged my batteries and thought about why I was in the music industry and came back with a sort of different view and I don't really mind, like I'm really grateful that people have a lot of love for the music I make which is nice," he continued. "I'm in the music industry to perform. It took a year of not performing to realize that because I started getting like, pangs of being upset and I was like 'What am I upset about?' I was like, 'Oh yeah, I haven't played a show in a year.'"
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"It's that buzz, it's a like a drug, you get addicted to it," he added. "That's why Bob Dylan will continuously tour, cause that's his drug."
As for Sheeran's "buzz," he says he'll keep the albums -- and their math symbol names -- coming for quite a while.
"I'm not planning on doing the math symbol thing for all of them, but yeah, I have thought about that and I have another 5 lined up that will be [coming] after the next [album]," he revealed. "I have two more math things and five more different things coming up. Seven more albums and then I'm done."
"I think the time in my life where I would like to pause is [after I have] kids," he said. "I would like to see my kids grow up and then when they get to about 14, 15, 16, when they don't really want their dad around anymore cause he's uncool, that's when I'll start doing it again."
Sheeran spoke more about his upcoming album -- and dished on pal Taylor Swift's new music as well -- during another interview this week at BBC's Radio 1 Breakfast morning show.
See more in the video below.