Songfacts®:

• "Repeat It" is a long-delayed dance-pop collaboration between Martin Garrix and Ed Sheeran that finally surfaced on May 15, 2026, roughly 12 years after it was first recorded. In pop terms, that is approximately the lifespan of three TikTok trends, four streaming platforms, and at least one pair of skinny jeans.
• The pair first became friends during a night out in Amsterdam. Garrix told FaceCulture he sent Sheeran "a chord progression with like synths," and Sheeran quickly returned "an amazing top line."
  
  Garrix built the final production around Sheeran's melody and admitted the process pushed him outside his comfort zone. "Me as a house artist is not really used to a vocal like what he gave to me," he explained. "It was very challenging." The track was eventually completed at Cypher Sound Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, after earlier work in Nashville.
• "Repeat It" is built around the desire to freeze a perfect romantic moment and relive it forever:
  
  If the world ends tonight
  You'll be in my arms
  We'll be frozen in time
  Underneath the stars
  
  The song treats love like a replay button, an attempt to hold onto one perfect instant before life inevitably barges in The title distills that idea directly, which explains why the song circulated for years under various working titles including "Rewind Repeat It," "Replay Rewind," "Repeat Rewind," and "Rewind Repeated." At some point it began to resemble a group project where nobody wanted to finalize the file name.
• The music video leans into the rewind concept. Directed by Liam Pethick and filmed in Santiago, Chile, it finds Garrix and Sheeran walking backward through the Oculus building while archival clips from the last 12 years of their lives flash onscreen. The nostalgic tone mirrors the song's long history, turning the video into both a love story and a time capsule.
• Garrix and Sheeran wrote the track with Amy Wadge, one of Sheeran's most trusted collaborators. Wadge has co-written several of his emotionally direct relationship songs, including "Thinking Out Loud," "Galway Girl."
  
  Production duties were shared by Garrix, Dutch producer Mesto, and Swedish producer Osrin.
• For years, disputes between Garrix's label, Spinnin' Records, and Sheeran's label, Atlantic, derailed the song's release. In a 2017 Radio 538 interview, Garrix described the situation as "label issues and a lot of headaches," explaining that competing release schedules repeatedly pushed the track aside. Fans became so frustrated that they launched a Change.org petition demanding its release, while leaked versions of the song circulated online by 2019.
  
  When the track finally emerged in 2026, both artists admitted they had simply been "overthinking everything."
• The official release coincided with Garrix's 30th birthday celebrations. Ahead of his concert at Santiago's Movistar Arena, he placed playful billboards around the city reading: "hi ed, can we please release our song? xx marty." During the show, Sheeran made a surprise appearance, performing "Repeat It" acoustically for the first time before joining Garrix for a hybrid live DJ set.