Perfect
by Ed Sheeran
The gentlest English card here, and the right one if you are starting from nothing. The nouns are things you can point at — hand, eyes, grass, home, dress — so you can learn them without translating first. The verbs are where a beginner actually gains ground: fell in love and give you up are not single words but fixed combinations, and a great deal of English is built out of exactly these. Learning each as one unit, rather than word by word, saves you from producing the version your own language would suggest, which is the mistake that marks a beginner fastest. Two imperatives, kiss me and hold my hand, show you the form with no ending to worry about. Slow tempo, clear diction, short lines.
How to study this song
Learning “Perfect” means 61 entries at A1+ — 31 English words, 8 adjectives and 22 verb forms, every one taken from what the song actually says. Begin with angel, arms and breath: get those and most of the lines stop being guesswork. This one leans on its verbs: 22 distinct forms against 8 adjectives, so conjugation is where the effort goes. At this level the goal is recognition: hear a word, place it, keep going.
The words of this song, in several languages
Every word below is taken from this song and translated by us. Nothing here is the lyric itself — these are the individual words you need in order to follow it.
Vocabulary
| EN | ES | IT | FR | PT | NL | DE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| angel | ángel | angelo | ange | anjo |
What this song teaches you
Level · A1+
- Vocabulary words
- 31
- Adjectives
- 8
- Word combos
- 11
- Expressions
- 10
- Verb forms
- 22
- Quiz questions
- 35
Background
About the song
“Perfect” is a romantic ballad written and recorded by the English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran for his 2017 album “÷” (Divide).
Set to a gentle, waltz-time acoustic backing, the song was inspired by Sheeran’s partner and pitched deliberately as a modern wedding standard in the tradition of the slow-dance classics he grew up with.
Its warm, unadorned arrangement and vow-like lyric helped it become one of the most-played first-dance songs of its generation, and Sheeran later re-recorded it as a duet — “Perfect Duet” — with the American superstar Beyoncé.
Sheeran wrote it about Cherry Seaborn, whom he had known at school and met again in New York, and produced it with Will Hicks, with string arrangements by his brother Matthew. A third version, “Perfect Symphony”, sung partly in Italian with Andrea Bocelli, appeared in December 2017.
Did you know?
The solo version was a hit on release, but it was the December 2017 duet with Beyoncé that pushed the song to number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, giving Ed Sheeran his second chart-topper there after “Shape of You” and Beyoncé her first solo number one in nine years.
In the UK, Sheeran pulled off a rare feat as “Perfect” and the album “÷” simultaneously topped the singles and albums charts, and the track became the country’s Christmas number one for 2017.
Charts & streaming
“Perfect” reigned atop the Billboard Hot 100 for six weeks and spent an unusually long time inside the top ten, later passing a full year on the chart.
It reached number one in the UK and many other countries and was certified multi-platinum around the world, ranking among the best-selling and most-streamed songs of Ed Sheeran’s career. It is certified 13× platinum in the United States, 10× platinum in Britain, 16× platinum in Australia and double diamond in Canada.