Ed Sheeran Says His ‘End Goal’ is to Go Country Full-Time

Pop superstar Ed Sheeran has dabbled in country music, and he’s even said he’d consider a genre switch into the format.

But in a new episode of the Call Her Daddy podcast, Sheeran seems more confident than ever that his future is in country. He even called it an “end goal” to become a full-time country artist.

“Nashville is, like, my favorite city in the States,” the singer said after host Alex Cooper asked him if he had any plans for a country album. “My end goal would be like, I’m gonna move to Nashville and transition to country.”

Sheeran has certainly flirted with the idea, and worked with a number of country music’s biggest stars. He’s shared a stage with Luke Combs, duetted with Chris Stapleton and played iconic downtown Nashville honky-tonk Tootsie’s.

But the singer says there’s one important thing holding him back from fully making a move into country as a solo artist. When he does it, he wants to do it right.

Read More: 16 Hip-Hop and R&B Stars Who Went Country

“I feel like I have to do it properly,” Sheeran explains. “And I feel like once you transition to country, you can’t transition back. Once you’re there, you’re there.”

He adds, “It’s a genre you have to really respect. It’s not just, dip in and out.”

Country music has been a destination for some of the biggest global stars, especially in recent years. Some of them, like Chappell Roan and Beyoncé, have outright said that their country projects are one-offs, and they don’t intend to transition into the genre full-time. Others, like Post Malone, have released a country album and left the door open to continue making music both inside and outside the genre.

Then you’ve got stars like Darius Rucker, who made his foray into country in 2008 and never looked back.

As for what an Ed Sheeran country album might sound like? The singer hails from Suffolk, England, so it makes sense that his kind of country music might not sound like a lot of the U.S.-born stars on the radio.

“Because my heritage is sort of Anglo-Irish, and I grew up with trad music in my household, I think it would have to be a little twinge of that,” he says. “I think I would have to bring Irish trad music into country, because it’s all kind of the same instruments away.”