Ed Sheeran has announced his sixth studio album, entitled – and pronounced “subtract”.
The fifth and final entry in his series of albums titled with mathematical symbols, Sheeran wrote and recorded its 14 tracks with Aaron Dessner, a member of US alt-rock band the National who also had a major creative role in Taylor Swift’s Folklore and Evermore.
It is billed as a return to traditional singer-songwriter performance, after the polished pop of much of Sheeran’s catalogue; a press release promises songs ranging from “pared back, folk-leaning textures to bolder, full-band/orchestral arrangements”.
In a statement accompanying the album announcement, Sheeran said he had scrapped 10 years of work on – (initially intended as a purely acoustic album) that had resulted in hundreds of songs, after a series of events in his personal life in early 2022. “In just over a week, I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts,” he said.
These events included his pregnant wife being diagnosed with “a tumour with no route to treatment until after the birth”; the death of “best friend … a brother to me” Jamal Edwards, the music entrepreneur whose platform SBTV helped launch Sheeran’s career; and the trial for plagiarism he eventually won in April 2022, when he had been accused of copying another song for his hit Shape of You.
“I was spiralling through fear, depression and anxiety,” Sheeran said. “For the first time I’m not trying to craft an album people will like, I’m merely putting something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life.”
The album announcement is also accompanied by two new portraits of Sheeran by photographer Annie Leibovitz.
– follows 2021’s =, which like all but one of his previous albums reached No 1 in both the UK and US. Its singles Bad Habits and Shivers also both topped the UK chart, and a duet with Taylor Swift, The Joker and the Queen, reached No 2.
Since the album’s release, Sheeran has appeared on a globetrotting series of tracks, ranging from Nigeria’s Burna Boy to Colombia’s J Balvin, Argentina’s Paulo Londra and Jamaica’s Ishawna. Bam Bam, a collaboration with Cuban-American singer Camila Cabello, was a UK Top 10 hit, and his remix to Peru by Nigerian vocalist Fireboy DML was a long-running hit, reaching No 2 and going two times platinum in the UK. He also had a No 1 with his festive Elton John collaboration Merry Christmas in 2021, and appeared on that’s year’s Christmas No 1 with Ladbaby.
More recently he recorded Celestial, a song featured on the video games Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and F64, a freestyle dedicated to Edwards.
Sheeran is currently on tour in Australia, where he has broken the country’s record for the most tickets sold for a single concert: 107,000 people will attend his gig on Friday 3 March at Melbourne Cricket Ground.
