The missing piece is Ed Sheeran. On March 1st, the celebrity announced on social media that his upcoming album, -, would be released on May 5 by Atlantic Records.
Sheeran’s decade-long run of mathematical albums, which also included the albums +, x, y, and = from 2011 to 2021, will end with Subtract.
“I spent a decade crafting the perfect acoustic album while working on Subtract, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear idea of what I thought it should be. Then, at the beginning of 2022, a number of things happened that altered my life, my mental health, and ultimately how I viewed music and art, Sheeran said in his announcement of the new album.
“Songwriting is my form of therapy. It aids in my effort to understand my emotions, he added. “I wrote without considering the content of the songs; I just wrote whatever came to me. I also replaced a decade’s worth of work with my darkest, most introspective thoughts in less than a week. Within a month, my pregnant wife learned she had a tumor and wouldn’t be able to begin treatment until after the baby was born. After the sudden death of my best friend Jamal, who I considered to be a brother, I found myself in court defending my honesty and my musical career. I was in a downward spiral of fear, depression, and anxiety.
“I felt like I was drowning, head below the surface, looking up but not being able to break through for air,” Sheeran concluded in his essay. As an artist, I didn’t think it was possible for me to publish a body of work that didn’t fairly reflect who I am and how I need to express myself at this particular stage of my life. That is all this album is. It is allowing a trapdoor into my soul to open. I’m simply releasing something that is authentic and true to where I am in my adult life, rather than trying to create an album that people will like. This is my attempt to make sense of the diary entry from last February. In this case, subtract.
To write and produce the upcoming album, Sheeran collaborated with The National’s Aaron Dessner, whom he met through friend Taylor Swift. The 14-track album is expected to include folk-leaning elements as well as full-band and orchestral arrangements. The band wrote over 30 songs during their month-long studio residency.
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