Ed Sheeran put all his pain into music and turned it into an album

Fate can hit even a superstar hard. In February 2022, Ed Sheeran learned that his childhood sweetheart, Cherry Seaborn, was suffering from a tumor. Because she was six months pregnant at the time, she could not be treated until after the birth of daughter Jupiter. The cancer turned out to be not too bad, wife and baby are healthy, but family happiness and an ideal world were in acute danger.

His state of mind suffered further when, at the same time, his best friend, music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards, died of a cardiac arrhythmia at the age of 31. Caused by cocaine.

Added to this were the grueling plagiarism processes that continue to this day. In 2017, an amicable settlement was reached regarding “Photo”. He won the “Shape Of You” trial, but now he has to defend himself again in New York. Marvin Gaye’s heirs claim he copied his 2015 song “Thinking Out Loud” from Let’s Get It On. He copied harmonic, melodic and rhythmic elements for his own song.

Sheeran denied everything, pointing out that pop songs often contain identical chord progressions that are not copyrighted. It is a hallmark of pop that songs are built on building blocks that have been available for free for hundreds of years.

The repeated lawsuits clearly affect the superstar spoiled by success. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said, “I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore.” And this week, according to the Daily Mail, he even testified in federal court that he found the plagiarism trial an “insult” and that he would also face personal consequences if found guilty. It would mean the end of his career. “When that happens, I’m done, I quit!” He said.

It’s not funny at all. Not even if you’ve been the most successful male pop star in the world for years. Sheeran, he thinks today, suffered from depression. He started psychotherapy, which helped him because he could just scream out all his anger.

And he did what he always does: write songs. Supposedly, when the fear of cancer overshadowed everything, sometimes seven plays in an hour, his wife explains in the current documentary film “The Sum Of It All”, which can be seen on Disney+ in four thirty-minute episodes. In this documentary, he wanted to show people “that he’s not just this hit machine, not this robot who always wants to be number one”. Incidentally, the really nice Ed really succeeds in that.

It is only logical that the bad events had an impact on the songwriting. On the new album «-» (pronounced «Subtract»), Ed Sheeran, this world champion of easy beach club hits shot from the hip, sings this time about naked despair, fear of loss and above all about his grief. He is vulnerable and feelings of melancholy and gloom predominate.

Nevertheless: the first single “Eyes Closed” sounds like a sugar shock, although it is about grief and paralysis after the death of your best friend. But that’s about it for hits. It is striking how little Sheeran cares about the usual choruses this time. He just took her out of the equation. The pace is also limited, very much so. One song after another is somehow composed in pitch black, the acoustic guitar, the piano and the occasional strings characterize the instrumental performance. You’ll be thankful when a little light comes in on the eighth track “Curtains”.

But the result is that this album is constantly drowning (“Salt Water”), sinking like a stone (“Life Goes On”) or brooding half dead (“Sycamore”). Strong is “End Of Youth”, in which the artist states that youth is finally passé with the death of a friend. Ed Sheeran may have had song artists like Damien Rice in mind for his Fifty Shades of Grey, but it ends up being quite a bit James Blunt.

The emotions are always laid as thick as possible, he constantly presses on the tear gland, there are no double entendres and, as usual with Sheeran, hardly any metaphors or surprising puns. Somehow you always guess what comes next. In all honesty, the ballad-heavy album is a bit monotonous.

Ed Sheeran is constantly working his way through a tsunami of trauma on «-». One believes his melancholy and the deep shocks. At the same time, you catch yourself having uncomfortable thoughts. All calculations? Is he perhaps some kind of influencer who carefully curates his suffering and shares it with the public? Or like a buddy who tells you just a little too often after four beers how bad fate has dealt him again?

And is the unthinkable possible? Could “-” be Ed Sheeran’s last album? At least he seems to be serious. In “No Strings” he sings, “If we get through this year, nothing can break our necks”.

(aargauerzeitung.ch)