After dating his former classmate Cherry Seaborn for several years, Ed Sheeran married her in 2018. This piano-driven ballad is an ode to the flame-haired singer's love of his life. And I know you could fall for a thousand kings And hearts that could give you a diamond ring When I fold, you see the best in me The joker and the queen Sheeran uses playing card metaphors to illustrate how his "Queen" married a "Joker" like him.
Sheeran wrote the song with Snow Patrol's Johnny McDaid and songwriter/producer Fred Again, the same day they penned "Bad Habits." The English pop star told Apple Music that after coming up with "Bad Habits," he thought they were done for the day. But when Fred Again played him a piano instrumental that Sam Romans (Clean Bandit's "Tears," Jonas Blue's "Rise") had come up with, he quickly got inspired. "It was probably 15 to 20 minutes of writing down metaphors and whispering them in," Sheeran said. "I had the line 'joker and the queen', then it was like, 'I fold, you saw my hand, you let me win, you put the cards on the table.'" For a while, Sheeran didn't like the song, as he felt it's "cheating when it's that easy." Then his brother, classical composer Matthew Sheeran, created a sweeping orchestral arrangement "and suddenly it sounded like this old classic that had been around since the '50s." He fell in love with the track and included it on Equals.
Cherry has been the muse for several of Ed's songs, including "How Would You Feel (Paean)," "Perfect," "Hearts Don't Break Around Here," "Best Part of Me" and "Afterglow." On Equals, "First Times," "Love In Slow Motion" and "2step," are also about her.
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