Ed Sheeran apparently started writing his own James Bond theme song before Billie Eilish got the gig

In the James Bond universe, it’s important to have some standards: martinis come shaken, not stirred, and Bond theme songs come written and performed by Billie Eilish, not Ed Sheeran. Unfortunately, this cardinal message got across to Sheeran a little too late, he tells That Peter Crouch Podcast in a new interview. Sheeran says that he was initially supposed to pen a Bond theme for No Time To Die, but lost out to Billie Eilish after he had already begun work on the song.

According to Sheeran, when Danny Boyle was still directing No Time To Die, he reached out to the singer and communicated with him about writing the film’s theme. Sheeran got to work, and says he had already written parts of the track when he was informed Billie Eilish would be handling the tune.

“I was within a fucking gnat’s pube of doing [a Bond theme song], and they changed directors, and then they just changed scripts and that was it. We’d done all the meetings, I started writing it,” Sheeran shares.

It’s hard to imagine what a Sheeran Bond theme would sound like (but if his later-career tendencies offer any indication, the first descriptive words that come to mind are “bad” and “boring”). Eilish’s theme went on to win a Grammy, a Golden Globe, and an Academy Award, making “No Time To Die” the third consecutive Bond theme to nab an Oscar.

Despite the disappointment of losing out, Sheeran still counts writing a Bond theme among his career goals. He also emphasizes that if he were to possibly be asked to write one again, he would answer with a resounding yes.

“I’m not gonna pretend it didn’t hurt not doing it,” Sheeran says. “But if they came back I’d be like, ‘Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah!’”