Ed Sheeran Song Earns Oscar Shortlist Spot for F1 Film

Ed Sheeran crafted the song "Drive" for the F1 movie with Brad Pitt. Apple Original Films tapped the four-time GRAMMY winner to compose a track for the movie's final scene. It made the Outstanding Original Song Oscar shortlist.

The film let Sheeran choose which scene would get his music and what type he'd create.

Three to four times a year, studios ask Sheeran to pen tracks for films. He's composed music for The Fault In Our Stars, The Hobbit, and That Christmas.

The track broke away from his typical ballads. 

"I don't think that 'Drive' is a song that could go side by side with a song on my album because it's such a stylistically different song, but it works so well in the movie, in the way that we did it before the movie," Sheeran said, according to Deadline. "I think that if you're making a song for a movie, you kind of have to not have the lens of pop on it, and more the lens of how is it going to work in the movie."

Producer and songwriter Blake Slatkin aimed to preserve something unpolished. "I normally work in pop music, and pop music is very on the grid, time-wise, and very polished," Slatkin said. "And because of where it was in the in the movie the end title, because it was supposed to represent Sonny (Pitt) and his whole journey, I wanted to keep it as raw as possible."

Dave Grohl from The Foo Fighters pounded out drums. John Mayer recorded guitar parts at Chaplin Studios, which he co-owns with director McG. Mayer invented the main riff during his first session — the one you hear winding through the entire piece. He threw in screeching guitar notes beneath other layers to mimic tires shrieking against pavement.

The F1 film stars Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Javier Bardem, and Kerry Condon. It hit theaters in June of last year.