Ed Sheeran just announced a new album hitting streams and stores on May 5, but the inspiration for it comes from some dark days of struggle.
The Brit singer’s latest post speaks about plenty of challenges that he and his family faced the past year and how his new album, “Subtract” is “something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life.”
Ed Sheeran Says “Subtract” Is His “Deepest, Darkest Thoughts”
In an Instagram post, the 32-year-old singer explained how he was working on his latest and upcoming album for years. Just like his previous albums, “+”, “x”, and “÷“, his latest album is yet another mathematical sign, “-” and pronounced, “Subtract”.
Wrote Sheeran, “I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art.”
Sheeran also explained how songwriting is cathartic for him, and for his latest album, he poured his heart out, saying, “Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts.”
Ed Sheeran Mentions Wife’s Tumor & Copyright Trial
Sheeran then mentioned all that he had to struggle with, including his wife Cherry Seaborn having a tumor while pregnant with their second child. Wrote the “Bad Habits” singer, “within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumor, with no route to treatment until after the birth.”
After he and his wife welcomed their first child, daughter Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran, in August 2020, Cherry got pregnant again in 2021. Luckily for the singer and his wife, the medical issues seemed to be resolved now, as they welcomed their second daughter, Jupiter Seaborn Sheeran earlier in 2022.
Sheeran also mentioned a loss, writing, “My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly…”
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Finally, the copyright trial over the lyrics of Sheeran’s hit song, “Shape of You” also seems to have taken a lot out of him, as he mentioned, “I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter.”
Sheeran was later cleared in the trial and celebrated his win by saying, “I feel like claims like this are way too common now and have become a culture where a claim is made with the idea that a settlement will be cheaper than taking it to court, even if there’s no basis for the claim. It’s really damaging to the songwriting industry. There are only so many notes and very few chords used in pop music. Coincidence is bound to happen if 60,000 songs are released every day on Spotify. That’s 22 million songs a year, and there are only 12 notes that are available.”
The singer wrote how all this and more made him spiral through “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.”
Fans commiserated with him with kind words like:
“I burst into tears reading your 2022 story… I very much hope your girls are all alright and recovering ❤️🩹 I am excited to hear your creations, although that hit me really hard this morning. You will never read this, but your music is so important to me.”
Fans Cannot Wait For His Musical Magic To Happen
Ed Sheeran ended his post by writing, “As an artist, I didn’t feel like I could credibly put a body of work into the world that didn’t accurately represent where I am and how I need to express myself at this point in my life. This album is purely that.”
With songs like “Dusty”, “Curtains”, “Salt Water”, “End of Youth”, “Borderline”, and “Life Goes On”, fans feel that this is not going to be an easy album as one wrote: “At a loss for words. Thank you Ed for opening up to us 💛 I think this album is not gonna be an easy one for all of us but I’m bloody excited.”
Like always, Ed Sheeran’s fans and followers are excitedly waiting for the May 5 release as Sheeran continued to say that this album is “opening the trapdoor into my soul. 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. This is last February’s diary entry and my way of making sense of it. This is Subtract.”
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