Singer songwriter Passenger on his new album and being pals with Ed Sheeran

Virgin Radio

8 Jan 2021, 14:46

Most of us can all identify with being (very) drunk and (very) brokenhearted which is why Passenger’s new album will pull heartstrings everywhere. The artist joined the Chris Evans Breakfast Show with Sky earlier to talk about his musical offering, writing in the back of a van and working with buddy Ed Sheeran.

He told Chris: “I’ve been mates with Ed Sheeran for years and years and we've always said we were going to do some kind of collaboration, whether it be a duet or something else.

"When I wrote my new single Sword From The Stone I recorded it into my phone and I sent it to him just to see what he thought. 

“He phoned me back in seven minutes and was like ‘I love this song and we should do something with it’ so to cut a long story short, he ended up doing an alternative version of the song. 

“So I've got the album version and then the Ed Sheeran version which is the Gingerbread mix which will come out next week. It's lovely.

“I mean, it's a ridiculous situation to have someone who's as talented as Ed to come and help with all of this stuff and I feel very lucky to call him a friend.

“It's the same song, it keeps the integrity of the song in tact but he's given it this really punchy pop-y kind of production and I'm really, really happy.”

And what’s happening at the Royal Albert Hall? He told Chris: “I think if we were in normal times we would have always done an album release party or something. Obviously, options are limited so we decided to film a gig/little documentary at the Albert Hall.

"It’s 10 or 11 songs played live and it's being screened on Sunday. The way that you see it is if you order the record from my webstore which is Passengermusic.com, then you get it for free.”

He told Chris about the song Suzanne and who she really is. He explained: “I've always really enjoyed putting myself into different characters when I write and Suzanne is a fictional character. 

“I think actually everyone has met Suzanne at some stage. It's a story of this older woman who sits in the same seat, in the same bar every night, drinking the same drink and staring off into the distance. It’s a bit of a sad one but I love that song.

“I actually wrote it in the back of the splitter van. We were driving through London on this beautiful spring day and we drove past the Houses of Parliament and all that stuff and it just looked so gorgeous.

“That guitar riff just started happening and I literally wrote it in about 30 minutes. It was a very inspiring little moment.”