Perfect – Ed Sheeran for String Quartet

Description

Perfect ( Ed Sheeran ) String Quartet Arrangement

Instrument : Violin 1, Violin 2, Viola, Cello

Key : A Flat Major  ( optional key : G Major )

Duration : 4’20”

Perfect is a song by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran from his third studio album ÷ (2017). After the album’s release it charted at number four on the UK Singles Chart. On 21 August 2017, Billboard announced that Perfect would be the fourth single from the album. A version of Perfect, titled “Perfect Duet” with American singer Beyoncé was released on 1 December 2017. Another duet with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, titled “Perfect Symphony”, was released on 15 December 2017.

The song is a romantic ballad written about his girlfriend Cherry Seaborn, whom he knew from school and reconnected with when she was working in New York. Sheeran revealed that the inspiration for the lyrics came after visiting James Blunt’s house in Ibiza, where the two singers had listened to the rapper Future’s music at six in the morning.

The song is performed in the key of A♭ major with a tempo of 63 beats per minute in ^12/₈ time (if not using triplets) or ^4/₄ time (if using triplets). “Perfect” moves at a chord progression of A♭5–Fm7–D♭sus2–E♭. The vocals span from E♭₃ to A♭₄ in the song.

Perfect debuted at number four, selling 62,599 copies. After Sheeran’s performance of “Perfect” on The X Factor on 26 November 2017, the song reached a new peak in the UK, advancing to number three and selling 32,507 units. The Beyoncé version, released on 1 December 2017, drove consumption of the track to 89,359 sales (including 45,460 from sales-equivalent streams) as it became Sheeran’s second number-one song from ÷, following “Shape of You” – and his fourth number-one single in total. With UK sales of 1,048,313, “Perfect” became Sheeran’s tenth million-selling single. It also was the Christmas number-one song for 2017.