Laura Sheeran – shares new single featuring Katie Taylor ‘Red Woman’

Laura Sheeran returns with new single ‘Red Woman’, a unique collaboration with world champion boxer Katie Taylor. The track is the first release from Sheeran’s forthcoming PERSONA [Fighter] album. Taylor features as the rhythmic spine of the album providing beats and boxing samples across the record.

Sheeran wrote ‘Red Woman’ in December 2023, after watching Taylor defeat Chantelle Cameron ringside at Dublin’s 3Arena. What began as a song inspired by that fight eventually developed into a bigger idea to feature Katie more directly inside the music itself.

That idea became reality in January 2026, when Sheeran and Taylor met in Tough Glove boxing gym in Bray for a one off training session. They captured a vast range of sonic textures from the session, which Sheeran has used both on this single Red Woman, and across the rest of the album.

“Red Woman is a tribute to women who don’t fit the mould. It’s a song for women all over the world who have to fight and find new ways to thrive in a world that wasn’t built for them. At a time in Ireland when women and girls boxing was not sanctioned, Katie competed as a boy. Women like Katie Taylor are an inspiration to us all.

I thought it would be cool if she featured on the song she had inspired, not just by name or in the lyrics, but integrated musically, the beats and rhythms of her literal fight. So last year I stuck my neck out and got in touch with her team to ask about doing a potential recording session to sample the sounds of Katie boxing for the song… and I was absolutely over the moon when she agreed and was up for it!

The plan expanded, and in January this year we recorded together to capture a vast array of sounds that now feature on songs across the whole of my Fighter album. I never would have thought this was possible when I first wrote the song in 2023, but somehow here we are.”

The collaboration also has a personal significance for Sheeran.

“Boxing has been woven into my family for generations. My grandad was heavily involved in the sport while living in London and was part of the British Boxing Board of Control. When my grandparents returned to Ireland, they established Gorey Boxing Club in 1986, which became an important part of their lives and their legacy. I grew up surrounded by that history – plaques, belts, medals, old boxing shoes, newspaper clippings. Posters from historic fights filled their home. Visits to the boxing club were part of my childhood. When my grandad died in 2013, members of Gorey Boxing Club formed a guard of honour at his funeral, and my grandmother remained involved with the club well into her nineties. Boxing was always there in the background of my life”

For Taylor, the recording session offered a chance to approach music through the sounds of her own sport, she commented “this is my kind of music.”

‘Red Woman’ was written by Laura Sheeran and produced by Sheeran and Brian Bolger. The boxing and percussion samples were performed by Katie Taylor, with Bolger recording and mixing the track at Third Ear Studio. The single was mastered by Dale Becker at Becker Mastering in Pasadena, California.

The new single arrives as Sheeran prepares for her headline performance at Electric Picnic, where she will take to the Croí Stage this Friday night from 1.30am to 3.30am.

The performance has been developed as a large-scale live production, bringing together Sheeran’s band with four lighting designers, ten dancers, four pole dancers and visuals. Sheeran will also perform as one of the pole-dancers in the show.

With ‘Red Woman’, the physicality and rhythm of boxing moves from the ring into the music, connecting a song fired by the energy of one of Katie Taylor’s landmark fights with the wider story of Sheeran’s own family relationship with the sport.