Music superstars add more power to other artistes’ songs as songwriters

New Delhi, Jan 18 (IANS) Popular Canadian singer Bryan Adams has unveiled the title track of his upcoming album, "Shine A Light". Adding more power to the song is Grammy Award winner Ed Sheeran, who has co-written the song.

According to cbc.ca, Adams said the two met at one of Sheeran's Dublin concerts and stayed in touch afterwards. He explained in the announcement on Thursday that one day he sent Sheeran the chorus for a song he called "Shine a light", asking him if he would consider a writing collaboration. Sheeran responded by sending Adams a few verses, which ultimately became part of the song.

This isn't the first time that Sheeran has taken on the role of a songwriter for other artistes. Sheeran has also written for singers like Rita Ora, Justin Bieber and The Weeknd. In fact, the new song "Hello my love", which marks Westlife's first new track in eight years, was also penned by Sheeran.

Mark Feehily, a member of Irish boy band, had said in an interview: "Ed is now one of the biggest stars in the world, but also when I first met him, he was just doing gigs in bars and he was not very widely known."

"When I met him that time, he was a huge Westlife fan and learnt to play the guitar to one of our greatest hits and he just loved Westlife. I thought, that's really cool, this really talented singer-songwriter loves Westlife," Feehily added.

While Sheeran writes his own songs as well, he doesn't mind other artistes lending their expertise to him. "Shape of you" -- one of the biggest hits of Sheeran -- was co-written by Snow Patrol band member Johnny McDaid, who has also penned lyrics of songs for singers like Pink and Robbie Williams.

Talking about bands, Backstreet Boys' song, "Chances", from "DNA" -- the pop vocal group's first album in six years -- has singer Shawn Mendes as part of its writing team.

"Shawn is so talented and a freaking sweetheart," Backstreet Boys member AJ McLean said in an interview.

Last month, "Cheap Thrills" hitmaker Sia had announced that this year she will be releasing an album. Whether she will collaborate with other artistes or not, is still not known but she is one of the songwriters behind some of the biggest chartbusters like "Diamonds" by Rihanna, "Perfume" by Britney Spears, "Let me love you (until you learn to love yourself)" by Ne-Yo and "We are one (ole ola)" by Pitbull.

Singer Bruno Mars also has a list of writing credits. "Can we dance" by The Vamps, "Who dat girl" by Flo Rida, "Tomorrow" by Sean Kingston and "All I ask" by Adele are some of the songs that are part of the list.

Among others, singers Taylor Swift and Adam Levine have also shown their songwriting prowess in songs with vocals by other acts -- a trend that might stay forever.