Grammy Award-winning artists Ed Sheeran and John Mayer, along with producer Blake Slatkin, detail the creation of their original song “Drive” for F1. Released on June 20, 2025 as the fifth single from the film’s soundtrack album, “Drive” was co-written by the trio.
In an interview with Variety’s Behind the Song, the trio revealed that the idea for the song came after Slatkin saw the film.
“My friend at Atlantic Records, who was working on the soundtrack, called me and asked me to come see the movie,” Slatkin said. “I literally walked out of the preview room and called Ed and John at the same time and was like, I have to write a song for this.”
Slatkin, who previously co-starred with Sheeran on his eighth studio album, Play, also mentioned that he was shown a scene from the film that ended up with music and was asked to “choose”.
“What we all wanted was to have Brad Pitt in the sunset scene,” Slatkin said. Sheeran added: “We keep playing this song as people leave the theater.”
It was clear to Mayer that the trio wanted a rock ‘n’ roll vibe. Within 10 minutes of the first session, Mayer came up with the rock riff that would become the basis of the song.
“You know Ed, he just started writing. He doesn’t say, ‘Well, hey, let’s start doing this,'” Mayer said. “The distance between not having a song and Ed having a song is one millimeter. Ed’s ability to intuit a song…I’ve never seen anyone like this, really.”
When Sheeran left for England, they found time to write lyrics together. Sheeran was attending a friend’s bachelor party at a budget holiday camp in England, where he wrote the lyrics to “Drive.”
“There was a time when we were supposed to write lyrics together, so I sent them to Ed,” Slatkin said. “He was eight hours ahead, so I woke up and he was like, ‘It’s over, I’ll call you.’ And he just sang it.”
Still looking for a drummer, the first name that came to mind for the group was Dave Grohl from the Foo Fighters.
“When we had previously recorded with another drummer and had a demo with that other drummer, I kept thinking, “Is the song too slow? Is the tempo weird?” and then the second Dave played it and I was like, ‘Oh, this is perfect,'” Slatkin revealed.
Mayer, who felt that the song was becoming an “unhinged, unfettered rock and roll” sound, spoke about the decision to keep the cymbals quiet, stating that the song “still had to be a pop song to some extent.”
Slatkin also added that they needed to leave space for Sheeran’s voice on “Drive,” calling his song “a generational vocal performance,” and added that Grohl was surprised when he first heard the song.
“When Ed wants to make a voice that you wouldn’t normally hear, he puts it into overdrive. And when it comes out, you’re shocked,” Mayer said.
Sheeran talked about his decision to start the chorus with the lyrics “Ha-la-lay-la, we can riding,” joking that the singer-songwriter will have to make it an “occasional” performance now that he has lost his voice.
“I think vowels in general can be really fun for people to sing, so we don’t fight whether there’s a cool vowel sound or not. If you listen to ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ just Van Morrison saying ‘sha la la,’ obviously it sounded really good,” Sheeran said. “And that’s the part that everyone can sing along to.”
The song also features keyboardist Rami Jaffee and bassist Pino Palladino, the latter of whom has played with the John Mayer Trio since 2005.
“There’s really no tricks to this song,” Slatkin said. “I think it’s very special to be the only human being in the room, and I’m not going to go into too much detail, but we all watched the movie and saw that Brad’s character in the movie was this rough-and-tumble, kind of dirty guy. And for us,[this song]embodies that. There’s nothing going on other than just the musicians.”
“Drive” peaked at number 49 on the UK Singles Chart and was ranked by Billboard as the best of the 17 songs included in the film.
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