“There’s beauty when it’s bleak,” Ed Sheeran reminds himself
in “Boat,” the opening song on his new album, “-” (pronounced “Subtract”).
Mortality loomed around the British musician in 2022, the year he wrote most of
the songs on “-”, and it is reflected in the music: subdued, primarily acoustic
and downtempo, and a long way from the big beats and brash productions of its
predecessor, “=” (“Equals”) in 2021. Its songs balance between despair and
reassurance, barely tilting toward optimism. “If we make it through this year
then nothing can break us,” he vows in “No Strings”.
اضافة اعلان
In a Disney+ documentary series, “Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It
All,” which was released just before the new LP, Sheeran says the album reveals
his “deepest, darkest thoughts.” He has been openly diaristic before: airing
career grudges in “Eraser,” exploring his family lore in “Nancy Mulligan,”
greeting a new child in “Welcome to the World.” But his latest songs cope with
pain, depression, and mourning, and they struggle to find happy endings.
In “End of Youth,” he sings, “Can’t get a handle on my
grief/When every memory turns to tears,” and in “Borderline,” he admits,
“Sadness always finds an in/Sneaks its way past infecting everything.”
Previewing the album with a 2022 concert at Union Chapel in London that’s shown
in the documentary, Sheeran found himself crying onstage.
In “Toughest,” a bonus track, Sheeran sings, “The doctor
said it’s cancer and a baby’s on the way.” That’s reportage: Sheeran’s wife,
Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor in her arm while pregnant
with their second child, Jupiter. (She got treatment after the child was born.)
In February 2022, Sheeran’s close friend Jamal Edwards died at 31; he was a
YouTube tastemaker, producer, entrepreneur, and DJ who gave Sheeran pivotal
early recognition.
In 2022 and into this year, Sheeran also faced multiple
lawsuits over accusations of plagiarism, since he tends to use chord
progressions and structures that give his songs pop’s instant familiarity. At
times, he has added songwriting credits as resemblances emerged, as he did in
“Photograph” (citing “Amazing”, a hit by Matt Cardle, whose collaborators
Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard sued in 2016) and “Shape of You” (which
echoed TLC’s “No Scrubs”.) “I am just a guy with a guitar who loves writing
music for people to enjoy,” he said after prevailing in a case involving Marvin
Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” last week. “I am not and will never allow myself to be
a piggy bank for anyone to shake.”
Still, Sheeran also spent much of 2022 and 2023 as a touring
superstar, headlining stadiums worldwide with his voice, guitars, keyboard, and
loop machine, getting tens of thousands of people singing along. Over the past
decade, he has proved himself to be a consummate, driven 21st-century musician:
gifted, career-minded, and supremely adaptable yet easily recognizable, writing
songs that revel in direct language and big feelings.
Sheeran has made himself the USB port of pop songwriting,
connecting with virtually everything. He can reach back to the tunefulness of
his Irish forebears, croon in an R&B falsetto, wax folky and introspective,
pump up a rock anthem, deliver a perky pop chorus or flaunt the syncopated flow
of a rapper. He has written or collaborated on folk-pop, hip-hop, grime, K-pop,
R&B, Afrobeats, Latin pop, movie themes, reggaeton, electronic dance music
and more — too prolific to be contained.
According to the documentary, Sheeran had a decade-plus
master plan. His new album completes a five-album arc of arithmetic symbols, with
“-” following “+” (2011), “x” (2014), “÷” (2017) and “=” (2021). Per its title,
“-” was intended to be a stripped-down singer-songwriter album, though Sheeran
has by no means renounced big pop choruses.
“-” was produced by Aaron Dessner, the keyboardist and
guitarist from the National and a co-producer of Taylor Swift’s “Folklore” and
“Evermore.” Sheeran built most of the songs on instrumental tracks by Dessner:
sparse piano or guitar chords leading to stately choruses, often burnished with
somber string arrangements.
They are sturdy songs, even as Sheeran sings about fragile
emotions. In the hymnlike “Salt Water”, he contemplates drowning and possibly
suicide, with a choir rising behind him to share the line “Embrace the deep and
leave everything”; then he shrugs it off, singing, “It was just a dream”. In
“Life Goes On,” over a fitfully strummed guitar reminiscent of Tom Petty’s
“Free Fallin’,” he begs, “Tell me how/How my life goes on with you gone?” and
then wills himself forward: “Easy come, hard go/Then life goes on.”
Obviously, Sheeran does not worry about verbal cliches —
though in these songs, the sorrowful tone makes them sound more unguarded than
banal.
The album does have a stealth pop tune: “Eyes Closed,” which
Sheeran started in 2018 with hitmaker Max Martin and rewrote as a song to mourn
Edwards: “Every song reminds me you’re gone.” Acoustic instruments — cello,
guitar — carry the staccato arrangement, but the chorus still works up a hefty
beat and an “eye-yi-yi-eyes” vocal hook. Even in his deepest, darkest moments,
Sheeran invites a pop singalong.
Read more Music
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
