Trivia

• “River” was released as the album’s second main single. It peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached No. 1 in the UK, Sweden, Norway, and Austria.
• The song marks the first collaboration between Eminem and Ed Sheeran.

Words from Ed Sheeran

“

I sound like such a cunt name-dropping, but I was travelling in Australia and Russell Crowe has a house — this big farm. I get an email from Paul Rosenberg, Eminem’s manager, and he said, “We’re gonna start putting the album together, send any ideas.”

In the back of my head, there’s always been like, “If I would ever work with Eminem, I would do…” so I had a very clear idea of what I wanted to do. I used the studio at Russell’s house, played the drums on it, then played the guitar, recorded the thing, wrote the chorus, did the piano on it, and then sent it off and didn’t hear anything back. This was like March 2016.

Then in May 2017, I was in Mexico and my mate Emile, who produces a lot for me, was like, “Oh, I’ve done some drums and stuff on the ‘River’ song that you wrote,” and I was like, “Cool, are you going to send it to him?” And he’s like, “Oh, no, he’s done his verses.” And I was like, “What!”