Sheeran describes Punjabi as “melodic and poetic,” sharing how Aujla pushed him towards authenticity during the recording process
Ed Sheeran and Karan Aujla. Photo Courtesy (left to right): Liz Collins and artist’s team.
Ed Sheeran has joined forces with Karan Aujla for a new single that fuses English and Punjabi.
The collaboration, complete with a music video shot in New York, is slated for release in October.
Sheeran revealed the news during his Sep. 17 appearance on BBC Asian Network with Nikita Kanda. “The first time I sang in Punjabi was doing ‘Lover.’ Diljit was teaching, and then obviously doing it with Arijit. And I’ve just done a tune with Karan Aujla as well, where we’ve done like a little bit of that,” he said casually, hinting at the scale of the track.
Speaking about the upcoming video, Sheeran added, “We shot the video in New York last week. It’s really good. It’ll come out, I reckon, sometime in October.”
He also reflected on his growing connection with the language, saying, “What I found learning the bits that I’ve sung in Punjabi is a kind of melodic language, and even without melody, how poetic it is. The things that you say in English—when we translate it, sometimes it just doesn’t feel the same. So when you sing it in Punjabi or Hindi, whatever it might be, it always sounds way more beautiful.”
This isn’t Sheeran’s first experiment with Punjabi. He performed an unplugged rendition of “Lover” during Diljit Dosanjh’s Dil-Luminati tour and later collaborated with Arijit Singh on the chart-topping track “Sapphire,” which ranked at #8 on Billboard Global 200 as of June 2025.
With Aujla, however, Sheeran took things further, refining his pronunciation under the rapper’s guidance. “Like with Karan, sitting with him and him being like, ‘No, you say it like this, no, you say it like this.’ And I said, be really, really brutal with me. And so we sat together and he was brutally honest and we made it work. I’m just really excited now,” he shared.
For Aujla, fresh off the success of his album P-Pop Culture, which debuted at No. 3 on Billboard Canada’s charts, the collaboration represents another milestone moment—one that underscores Punjabi pop’s growing global reach.
This track marks a new cultural crossover, bringing together Sheeran’s mainstream pop sensibilities and Aujla’s Punjabi prowess in a multilingual collaboration designed for international impact.