For Ed Sheeran, the release of a new album usually means a confident sweep to No 1 and steady dominance of the Top 40 over the subsequent months. But there is more at stake than usual for the 32-year-old songwriter when he releases his fifth album, – (Subtract), next Friday (5 May).
The record documents a series of events last spring that Sheeran has characterised as the most challenging period in his life. His wife, Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with a tumour that couldn’t be operated on until after the birth of their second child. His best friend, music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards, died aged 31 after taking cocaine. Sheeran was also subject to a high-profile UK court case in which he faced claims he had copied a pair of songwriters’ work in his 2017 smash hit single Shape of You.
Sheeran won the case – but this week finds himself in US court defending the claim that his 2014 single Thinking Out Loud infringes on the copyright of Marvin Gaye’s 1973 hit Let’s Get It On, the verdict of which may arrive on Subtract’s release date. The lawsuit is being brought by the heirs of Gaye’s co-writer on Let’s Get It On, Ed Townsend, and alleges that Sheeran and co-writer Amy Wadge copied an ascending four-chord sequence, and its rhythm.
His previous victory doesn’t guarantee success, said entertainment lawyer Gregor Pryor. “In the UK, Sheeran could probably trust the judicial process a bit more. In the US, with trial by jury – that is harder.” In a string of recent pop copyright cases, including the likes of Katy Perry and Taylor Swift, Sheeran is “one of the highest-profile targets, so it’s got a whiff of the US celebrity lawsuit about it”.
He may also be harmed by what the prosecution has called a “smoking gun” – a live clip of Sheeran segueing from his song into Gaye’s. “It’s very unfortunate,” said Pryor. “You could argue that it illustrates his case that many songs are written on the same chord progressions, but I don’t think it helps.”
Adding to the pressure on Sheeran this week is the question of whether fans of a pop everyman who has built his career on relatability will engage with a deeply personal record that pivots from his usual spread-betting genre fare to focus on a single, melancholy sound.
The lead single from Subtract, Eyes Closed – the album’s poppiest outlier – charted at No 1 at the end of March, ending Miley Cyrus’s 10-week reign at No 1 with Flowers, propelled by a signed CD single that retailed for 99p. Its second single, however, the subdued Boat, only reached No 48 in this week’s charts.
Subtract is the final album of Sheeran’s mathematical symbols series, following + (2011), x (2014), ÷ (2017) and = (2021). He made the album with Aaron Dessner of US indie band the National – best known to pop fans as the co-producer of Taylor Swift’s two lockdown albums, Folklore and Evermore. Sheeran and Swift are old friends: when she asked Dessner to work on the re-recording of her 2012 album Red, which features two duets with Sheeran, she encouraged them to work together.
For Dessner, the potential of the collaboration lay in bringing out “the vulnerability and emotion in [Sheeran] to make music that would not normally be his inclination”, he said. Initially, Sheeran wanted to sideline his trademark guitar; Dessner convinced him to make a “really naked, avant garde but still guitar-oriented record”, and began sending him musical sketches to write to remotely.
Sheeran is known for a playing style in which he uses the body of his acoustic guitar as a percussive instrument. “His right hand is like a drum machine,” said Dessner. While he still wanted the songs to have rhythm, “I didn’t feel the need to try to make pop music.” Once Sheeran started responding to the sketches, songs came thick and fast. “One day, he sent me 14 ideas in response to a track,” said Dessner.
When they met on the Kent coast to record late last spring, they wrote 32 songs in a week, 14 of which feature on Subtract. “It was a vulnerable time,” said Dessner. Edwards died in the middle of the sessions, and Sheeran “was struggling emotionally with some really serious headwinds of loss”. He would ask Dessner if the lyrics were too heavy, detailing grief; how the birth of his first daughter prompted him to kick a “bad vibes” drug habit; sitting in the doctor’s waiting room with Seaborn – who underwent successful surgery – and asking whether this pain signifies “the end of youth”.
“There were times when he tracked vocals that were almost unusable because he was so emotional,” said Dessner. “There’s this raw, visceral beauty to a lot of it.”
During the Shape of You trial, Sheeran said the allegations had prompted him to start filming every recording session to avoid similar situations. There were documentarians in Kent, said Dessner, for creative security and to capture footage for a four-part Disney+ documentary launching on 3 May.
But filming sessions “can’t protect [Sheeran] against everything”, said Pryor. “It’s advisable. It clearly shows, ‘I wasn’t listening to Marvin Gaye and then I came up with this’, but it doesn’t irrefutably prove that he hasn’t heard the Gaye song and not copied it.”
Subtract has a misty, limpid sound, charged with distortion and glimmering electronic touches. The Kent coastline influenced Sheeran’s songwriting, said Dessner, with songs on Subtract referencing salt water, deep blues and natural imagery. “The waves won’t break my boat,” Sheeran sings on Boat, the fragile opening song.
Dessner recorded Sheeran’s voice through old tube microphones, creating a different, more vulnerable effect from his biggest hits. He singled out the song Borderline. “He sings in this very high, virtuosic voice – the only other person I think is capable of that would be Justin Vernon [AKA Bon Iver]. It was really moving, like [it’s] hanging out over a cliff. Rather than support it by building immaculate pop arrangements around it, I went in a totally different direction, supporting his voice harmonically without trying to fill every space with instant gratification.”
The effect is not a million miles from one of Sheeran’s formative influences, Damien Rice’s 2002 album O, nor, indeed, the National.
Sheeran is a commercial darling – the most listened-to artist in the UK in 2021, and second only to Harry Styles last year – but rarely a critical one. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, he balked at the idea that snobby indie fans might like this album because of Dessner’s presence. “Someone who’s never liked my music ever? And sees me as the punchline to a joke? For him to suddenly be like, ‘Oh, you’re not as shit as I thought you were?’ That doesn’t mean anything,” he said.
Dessner said he didn’t care about the potential cultural implications of their collaboration. “He’s made giant pop records that are easy to criticise, but on a human and artistic level, he’s so gifted and lovely. It couldn’t have been more natural, fun and rewarding to feel him jumping off the cliff with me. Over time, I’ve tired of the ‘what’s cool?’ debate.” The pair would continue to work together, Dessner said, and have made more than 30 new songs since Kent. “I’m even more excited about those – I feel we’re getting better.”
For Guardian music critic Alexis Petridis, the collaboration “doesn’t strike me as necessitating a huge leap of faith on the part of the public. Sheeran is an acoustic singer-songwriter, it’s not like he’s been making techno.” What would be interesting, he said, is learning the depth of fans’ investment in a famously relatable musician, who even in superstardom has written songs about the joys of cheap takeaways and is married to his childhood sweetheart. “Do you actually buy into the person, or just the person as a cipher for a normal, nice bloke?”
