More about: Bring Me The HorizonEd Sheeran

One of the biggest surprises at the BRITs this year wasn’t the shake-up of award categories, and it definitely wasn’t Adele taking home a truckload of awards; it was Bring Me The Horizon joining Ed Sheeran on stage for a rocked-up version of Sheeran’s summer hit ‘Bad Habits’. When the initial shock wore off, reactions were divided.

Today, the unlikely pairing released a studio version of the genre mash-up, but the final result falls short in quality. I don’t know what the game plan is here: a global pop star giving a bigger platform to alternative musicians? A play at beating out Encanto in the charts? Or just a bit of fun?

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with two different genres coming together; in fact, it’s an exciting trend that the music industry is welcoming more and more of, especially since the advent of TikTok. The problem here is that in ‘Bad Habits’, rock feels like an afterthought, and the whole thing sounds incomplete. Most of the song sounds exactly the same as the original, with a layer of electric guitars added in for a very slightly different effect.

Neither artist is a stranger to mixing things up a bit. Bring Me The Horizon have made some excellent pop-oriented records (amo, anyone?) and Ed Sheeran has been playing with genres since the beginning of his career, especially on his No.6 Collaborations Project, which saw him team up with musicians across the musical spectrum

What’s most disappointing about this ‘alternative’ version of ‘Bad Habits’ is that it could have been taken so much further. They could have rebuilt the song from the ground up, giving us a completely different take on the most popular song of 2021. If the energy from those screams at the end had been present throughout the whole track, we could be looking at something much more intriguing.

Of course, alternative genres like pop-punk are having a real moment right now, with Olivia Rodrigo and WILLOW experimenting with the sound and Avril Lavigne making her grand return. It’s a good moment for a release like this, and it’s no wonder that Sheeran wants to get in on the rock trend. But the lack of commitment to mixing these two genres, in the end, left too much to be desired on ‘Bad Habits’. If you’re going to do a radical reworking of a pop hit, you have to really make it count, otherwise it’ll just fall flat.

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More about: Bring Me The HorizonEd Sheeran