The first song to be put out was “Bad Habits”, released in June, and his next album will be named = (rather than -, as most had predicted), itself to be released at the end of October. This is a man, remember, who has known for at least ten years what his first five records would be. Of course, Sheeran might have taken a hiatus, but he still had “the plan”. I started painting and then the pandemic hit.” I went home, finally, decided to take some time away from my music it had become this monster. I thought it would be all downhill from here. That was the top of the mountain and, you know, I’d never do that again. “I walked off the stage in Ipswich, aged 28, and I thought that was it. It was a gruelling behemoth of a schedule that helped drive Sheeran’s total album sales well over 20 million. (And you think you got sick of hearing “Shape Of You” coming out of every fashion store, kebab shop and cab around that time?) It’s the world’s highest-grossing tour ever, beating even U2’s mammoth 360 Tour of 2009 to 2011, taking £557 million, with Sheeran playing to very nearly nine million concert goers. The musician has been in his own private Eden, pretty much, since he walked off stage in Ipswich in August 2019, the last gig of his herculean ÷ tour, a tour that consisted of a blister-inducing 260 shows and lasting very nearly two years. So he did what any multimillionaire pop star would do: he built his own castle within which to freely roam, ergo Sheeranland. His accompanying passengers, as you might imagine, were well lubricated. He had on no hoodie, no sunglasses, no cap, just his flame-red hair and backlit blue eyes out there in the wild, in the air, for hours and hours for all to see, point at and poke.
Something about cutting short his own holiday to go work on a film set. He once got caught – entirely alone, no mates or burly man mountain of a security guard – on an Easyjet flight back from Benidorm to London at two in the morning.
Also, look, it’s a lot nicer to eat without someone taking pictures of you.”Īlthough more under control, Sheeran in the past has been open about his near-crippling claustrophobia, not least when found in small, crowded public places. “Yes, we still have the pub and I know it’s fucking weird to have a pub in your garden, but if my mates come round we can eat in the pub and then if they want to carry on I can just leave them there and go back to the main house. I thought what she did with the two albums she put out during the pandemic is how albums will be released in the future. You know me and Taylor have had a ten-year friendship now we’ve seen one another evolve as people. Even if we hadn’t made music together we would still be mates. “You hear the hate way more when it is about you, trust me.” But his friendship with Stormzy? Now, that’s as real as it gets.
It’s something he’s (almost) made peace with: “I am very self-conscious about the way the world views me,” he admits. The image of Sheeran as more of pop music’s chief marketing officer, a songwriting scientist who makes surefire chart-shredding hits in a lab, rather than a humble singer-songwriter trying to express his creativity, is one he has heard about innumerable times before. Sheeran is sharp enough to get why some critics might think like this. Sheeran gets the cred through association and Big Michael gets a leg up and into some of Sheeran’s multibillion-strong global audience. If one assumes their core fan bases are vastly different – although there is inarguably overlap in that pop Venn diagram – then one might suspect the pair’s relationship is less about a friendship and more of a business partnership. If you let it, it can colour and taint everything he does – or rather everything his critics see him do – every piece of music he puts out, every casual, post-pandemic pop anecdote.Ĭase in point: for some, even saying the names “Stormzy” and “Ed Sheeran” in the same sentence still feels like something of a trick like, there must be money involved.
In certain circles – mostly earnest, chin-stroking circles where Centrist Dads in pink and navy Rapha cycling tops discuss the cultural significance of LCD Soundsystem’s final gig, in New York City on 2 April 2011 – cynicism attaches itself to Sheeran like an invisible fog. I sat down at 6pm and I didn’t get up until around 1am. He played me some new songs and I played him some new songs. “We’ve been FaceTiming a lot over the pandemic he was really intrigued with me having a kid and loved seeing Lyra. “I was at Stormzy’s place,” he begins, all of us simply enthralled to hear of someone’s, anyone’s, ability to actually see, touch or experience IRL another human being at close quarters, let alone, you know, actual showbiz gossip.