James Bay would love to collaborate with Sir Paul McCartney.

James Bay

James Bay

The 'Hold Back The River' hitmaker wouldn't turn down the chance to work with the Beatles legend and sees it as more of a possibility after he did the song 'FourFiveSeconds' with Kanye West and Rihanna, but admits he hasn't got "the guts" to ask him.

Asked if he'd like to work with the 'Let It Be' hitmaker, he told Absolute Radio: "When you see what he's done with more current artists like Kanye and Rihanna. I'd be open to discussing it. I suppose I wouldn't want to predetermine anything because the cool thing about working with someone with such a huge array of musical content from over so many decades is that he could kind of come at you with anything and I'd want to be open to all of that."

And while it would his "dream" collaboration he's too shy to approach the 74-year-old guitar god.

He added: "I'm not going to have the guts to go to him! I don't know! I think obviously it would be a total dream, you know, for someone like that to come to me. It's hard to even think about it as a real thing but dream-wise, it would be amazing."

The pair briefly met recently and James described the moment as jaw-dropping.

He said: "It wasn't the longest conversation, it was kind of brief because he was on his way somewhere. There were a lot of other people around for ages and then I got a moment to myself and I think it was a jaw to the floor moment after having actually met him."

And McCartney's not the only A-list pop star the 25-year-old singer/songwriter has in mind to work with, Ed Sheeran is also at the top of his list.

He said: "Ed Sheeran is totally a candidate. When you look at all the stuff he's done and how creative he is, I'd totally work with him. As a musician, it's really fun getting to know another musician by not exactly involving actual music at first, not pressured, just chatting and if it naturally, organically grew to something like collaborating, then fantastic. Fingers crossed."

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