The singer announced in an interview on BBC Radio 1, that the idea came about when both he and Usher went to a Passover dinner together. He said: “It was quite random. I met him once before, but never enough to be like, ‘Yo, what’s up man?’ but he went over to me with his phone and he’s like, ‘Yo, check it out’ and he’d downloaded ‘Sing’.And he was like, ‘Yo, man, do you want to get in the studio sometime?’ and I was like, ‘Yes, Usher, I would love to get into the studio sometime’.
During the interview Ed joked saying that he wanted to keep the song to himself “It was one of those songs that, as soon as we finished it, we were jamming out listening to the rough mix of it and I’m in my head, thinking, ‘I want this song’.”
The singer also revealed in the interview that the song could feature on Usher’s next album.
Usher was working with Skrillex and Diplo at the time. Skrillex then sampled a voice note Sheeran sent him. Ed explains “I had this guitar idea on my phone – it was literally just a voice note – and I emailed it to Skrillex. Then he took it in, sampled it and made a beat out of it, and then me and Usher just went back and forth on melody ideas and lyric ideas”.