Pop met metal, the BRIT Awards went completely off the rails, and millions of viewers were introduced to the sound of a breakdown whether they liked it or not. 🤘📺
Back in 2022, Bring Me The Horizon walked onto one of British music’s biggest stages alongside Ed Sheeran and transformed his chart-topping single “Bad Habits” into a snarling, riff-loaded monster. 🩸⚡
It was loud. 🔊
It was theatrical. 🎭
It was gloriously unexpected. 💥
And four years later, metal fans are still arguing about it. 🍿🤬
Was it a groundbreaking crossover that kicked down the walls between genres? Or was it the moment heavy music got a little too friendly with the mainstream?
Either way, nobody forgot it. 👀
🤯 A Collaboration Nobody Saw Coming
Ed Sheeran and Bring Me The Horizon sharing a stage sounded like the sort of musical pairing somebody might suggest after three pints and a particularly adventurous Spotify shuffle. 🍺🎧
On one side, you had one of the biggest pop stars on the planet. 🌍🎤
On the other, you had a Sheffield band whose career had taken them from chaotic deathcore beginnings to becoming one of the most ambitious and unpredictable names in modern rock. 🖤🔥
It should not have worked.
Then Bring Me The Horizon plugged in. ⚡🎸
The familiar pop arrangement of Bad Habits was ripped apart and rebuilt with thunderous drums, distorted guitars and the kind of crushing energy usually reserved for festival pits rather than primetime television. 🥁💣
Oli Sykes brought the screams. Ed Sheeran held his ground. The BRIT Awards suddenly felt like somebody had accidentally booked Download Festival for the evening. 🤘🏕️
Proper job. 🐉
🔥 The BRIT Awards Got Heavy
The performance did not settle for simply placing a few guitars behind a pop song and calling it metal.
Bring Me The Horizon attacked the track. 🩸⚔️
The stage was packed with theatrical dancers, gothic costumes, performers emerging from boxes and aerial movement unfolding above the musicians. It looked like a twisted nightclub, a horror production and an arena metal concert had all collided at once. 🦇🎭🔥
Meanwhile, Oli Sykes prowled across the stage as the song shifted from glossy radio pop into something darker, heavier and considerably more dangerous. 😈🎤
For a few chaotic minutes, millions of viewers were confronted by screaming vocals and chugging guitars during one of Britain’s biggest mainstream music broadcasts. 📺💥
You could almost hear the nation’s living rooms asking the same question:
“What on earth is happening?” 😂🤘
🎤 Ed Sheeran Refused to Play It Safe
One of the reasons the collaboration worked was that Ed Sheeran did not appear to treat Bring Me The Horizon as a novelty act.
He committed to the performance. 💪🔥
There was no awkward attempt to keep things clean, polite or radio-friendly. Sheeran stood in the middle of the noise and delivered the song as the band detonated around him. 💣🎶
It also reminded viewers that his musical background and tastes extend far beyond acoustic pop.
Sheeran has never been afraid to collaborate outside his usual lane, but performing alongside BMTH on the BRIT Awards stage was still a major gamble. 🎲⚡
This was not some hidden bonus track quietly released for curious fans.
This was a full-scale metal takeover on live television. 🏴☠️📺
🍿 Metal Fans Immediately Started Fighting
Naturally, the internet handled the performance with all the calm maturity you would expect. 😂🔥
Some fans thought it was brilliant. 🤘
Others treated it as if Bring Me The Horizon had personally broken into their homes and replaced every metal album with an Ed Sheeran record. 💿🚨
The usual accusations appeared almost immediately.
“Sell-outs.”
“Not metal.”
“Mainstream rubbish.”
You know the drill, butt. 🙄🐉
But those reactions ignored something important: Bring Me The Horizon had already spent years tearing apart the traditional rulebook. 📖💥
This was a band that had moved through deathcore, metalcore, alternative rock, electronic music, pop and industrial influences without ever staying in one place for long.
Experimentation was not a sudden betrayal.
It had become part of their identity. 🖤
🚧 Bring Me The Horizon Have Never Respected Genre Boundaries
BMTH’s ability to evolve has always divided opinion.
Some listeners still want the band to sound exactly as they did during their earliest years. Others have followed them precisely because nobody knows what their next release will sound like. 🎶❓
Their catalogue has included savage breakdowns, emotional rock anthems, electronic experimentation, orchestral arrangements and enormous pop hooks. 🎻💻🎸
They have worked with artists from across the musical spectrum and repeatedly found ways to make those collaborations feel recognisably theirs.
The Ed Sheeran performance was not the band abandoning heavy music.
It was the band dragging heavy music into a room where it was not traditionally invited. 🚪🔥
And they did not wipe their boots at the door. 🥾💥
🎧 Did It Introduce Pop Fans to Metal?
One of the biggest arguments in favour of the performance is simple: it exposed a massive mainstream audience to heavy music. 📢🤘
There were undoubtedly viewers who had never listened to Bring Me The Horizon before that evening.
Some probably hated every second. 😬
Others may have gone searching for the band afterwards, discovered tracks like Can You Feel My Heart, Throne, Shadow Moses or Drown, and fallen straight down the rabbit hole. 🐇🕳️
That matters.
Heavy music does not grow by keeping the gates locked and shouting at anybody who wanders too close. 🚫🔒
It grows through discovery. 🌱🎸
Sometimes that discovery happens through an older sibling’s CD collection. Sometimes it happens at a festival. Sometimes it happens because Ed Sheeran suddenly appears on television while Oli Sykes screams beside him. 😂🔥
There are stranger routes into metal.
🤑 The Meaningless “Sell-Out” Argument
The phrase “selling out” has been thrown at rock and metal artists for decades.
Sign to a major label? Sell-out.
Write a catchy chorus? Sell-out.
Appear on television? Sell-out.
Collaborate with somebody popular? Absolutely unforgivable. 🙄
Yet Bring Me The Horizon did not soften themselves for the BRIT Awards.
They made Bad Habits heavier. 💪🎸
They inserted their own personality into one of the biggest pop songs of the era and performed it with confidence in front of an audience far beyond their usual fanbase.
That is not surrender.
That is infiltration. 🥷🔥
🌍 A Moment That Changed How Crossover Performances Were Viewed
Cross-genre collaborations were hardly invented in 2022, but this one arrived at the perfect moment.
The barriers between rock, metal, pop, hip-hop and electronic music had already started crumbling. 🧱💥
Younger audiences were building playlists around mood and energy rather than rigid categories.
One minute they might be listening to a metalcore breakdown. The next, a pop anthem, a rap track or an electronic banger. 🎧⚡
The old tribal rules had become increasingly outdated.
Bring Me The Horizon and Ed Sheeran captured that shift in one unforgettable performance.
It was not designed to please everyone.
It was designed to create a moment.
And it absolutely did. 🔥
👀 Why Are People Still Talking About It?
Most awards-show performances vanish from memory almost immediately.
Artists sing the song. The crowd applauds. Somebody wins a trophy. Everybody goes home. 🏆🚕
This performance had something far more valuable: genuine unpredictability. ⚡
Nobody knew exactly how it would sound.
Nobody knew how the mainstream audience would react.
Nobody knew whether Ed Sheeran would look completely out of place once Bring Me The Horizon unleashed the heavier arrangement.
That uncertainty gave the performance an edge. 🔪🎶
It felt risky, strange and slightly dangerous—three qualities mainstream award shows rarely manage to produce. 😈
🤘 The Riff Report Verdict
The Bring Me The Horizon and Ed Sheeran collaboration remains one of the boldest moments in recent British music television. 🇬🇧🔥
It was ridiculous on paper, explosive in execution and divisive enough to keep people debating it years later.
Most importantly, Bring Me The Horizon did not step into the pop world and quietly behave themselves.
They brought the noise with them. 🔊💥
They took a global pop hit, loaded it with distorted guitars and screams, and reminded millions of viewers that heavy music can still invade the mainstream without losing its teeth. 🦷🎸
Was it traditional metal?
Not remotely. 😂
Was it one of the most entertaining and memorable crossover performances of the decade?
Absolutely. 🤘🔥
Sometimes rules are made to be broken.
Sometimes genre boundaries deserve to be smashed.
And sometimes Ed Sheeran needs a bloody massive breakdown behind him. 💣🎤
Did the collaboration prove that metal can thrive on the mainstream stage, or was it a crossover too far? Let us know what you reckon, butt! 👇🤘
Proudly Welsh. Proudly Loud. Zero Apologies. 🐉🔥🎸
