In a far-reaching interview with former soccer player Peter Crouch, the English singer Ed Sheeran made the shocking reveal that he was fired from making a song for the James Bond movie No Time To Die in favor of Billie Eilish when directors for the project switched.
Sheeran was speaking on That Peter Crouch Podcast, and also talked about some of the worst music gigs of his life, bringing his children on a concert tour, and moving back to his hometown of Suffolk.
On the James Bond gig, Sheeran revealed he almost got the iconic opportunity by saying rather crudely, “I was within a f––king gnat’s pube of doing one.”
He went on to clarify, “They changed directors, and then they just changed scripts, and that was it. But we had done all the meetings, I had started writing it.”
Sheeran admitted that it stung to lose the chance saying, “You’ve got to –– especially as an English singer –– want to do a Bond song.”
“If they come back, I’ll be like ‘Yeah, yeah of course,'” Sheeran also said, noting that he’s not at all too bitter to refuse if they come back to him.
While Sheeran is right that it’s an English honor to contribute to the Bond series, plenty of American musicians besides Eilish have done Bond songs. These include Sheryl Crowe, Chris Cornell, Carly Simon and Tina Turner.
Even if you think it was a crucial mistake to swap Sheeran for Eilish, it’s hard to deny the success of her track, also titled “No Time To Die” for the movie. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, joining “Skyfall” by Adele and “The Writings on the Wall” by Sam Smith as Bond songs that have taken Oscar gold.
Here’s a link to Sheeran’s full interview in video form.
