Rich man doesn't cry anymore: Ed Sheeran releases album about his beloved wife
On Friday, September 12, Play was released, the eighth solo album by Ed Sheeran, one of the best-selling pop singers of our time. The CD is billed as the artist's comeback after a prolonged period of problems in his personal life and fully fits this description, although the release was preceded by several bright, danceable singles. Izvestia studied the Play in detail and made sure that the singles were deceptive. It's unlikely that such an album was expected from Sheeran — the question is whether the surprise will be pleasant.
Throwing off the shackles of sadness
One of the most popular singers on the planet declares for a reason in the very first song of the new album: "I played at all the stadiums I could" (which, by the way, is true; Sheeran was at Luzhniki in 2019). But just a couple of years ago, Ed Sheeran's condition could be described by the phrase "the rich cry too." In 2023, he released two releases at once, one called the minus sign, "-", the other — Autumn Variations. These records sounded more intimate than the artist's previous work, more arthouse — and noticeably more melancholic, sometimes even gloomy.
Sales turned out to be more modest than before, and the number of streams was significantly lower, even though Eyes Closed from the album took the first place in the UK chart. The following is against the background of previous records that Sheeran regularly set on streaming services. His Shape of You still holds the top spot in Apple Music streaming and was for a long time the most listened-to song in Spotify history, until it was overtaken by The Weeknd's Blinding Lights hit. And you can also recall that in 2017, Sheeran became the first artist whose 14 songs simultaneously reached the top 15 of the British singles chart.
The emotional tone of "-" and Autumn Variations was explained by events in the personal life of the most famous red-haired man in the world. Since 2021, Sheeran has endured a series of personal losses, stresses, dramas, tragedies and troubles. His friend Jamal Edwards, a young entrepreneur who played a key role in the beginning of Ed's career, died of a heart attack at the age of 31. The musician's wife, Cherry Seaborn, had a tumor during her second pregnancy. Sheeran himself became embroiled in a lengthy legal battle: the heirs of Marvin Gaye accused the artist of borrowing the melody of the track Thinking Out Loud. One of the court sessions forced Sheeran to skip his grandmother's funeral.
But Gay's heirs lost the case, Cherry Seaborn gave birth safely and had a tumor removed, Sheeran himself calmed down, stopped drinking and learned, as he, again, sings in the first song of his new album, "don't let depression get to you."
It's worth remembering that Sheeran is 34 years old, and adjusted for his status, popularity, and wealth, this is essentially a classic plot. The young man achieved early success, and then faced his first serious life crisis, which he overcame through purification and rapprochement with family and friends. Play is the result of this very cleansing.
The album was preceded by four singles at once: Azizam, Old Phone, Sapphire and A Little More. Spoiler alert: these are the best songs on the whole record.
Technicolor
That's how Ed Sheeran describes Play. Technicolor is a color film imaging technology that was widely used in Hollywood and Western animation in the first half of the twentieth century. What was it good for and why is it appreciated now? The saturation of the palette — and the fact that the image in Technicolor never looked natural. It was striking in its hypertrophied, even slightly fantastic coloring. Technicolor films are always a bit of a fairy tale.
The first half of the Play — the one with all the singles — really seems to be striving for the "Technicolor". The listener is overwhelmed by a cascade of sounds, the shades of which seem to be audible. The palette is intentionally excessive, slightly conventional, and sharpened to try to evoke a sense of childish delight. Sheeran tries out musical colors that he had previously avoided.
The very first song, Opening, retells the musician's recent mental trials and at the same time refers to his early period — to the recognizable fusion of acoustics and rap, which in the early 2010s was perceived as a new word in pop music. The rap part in the Opening is framed by a slightly sinister, vague and at the same time emphatically pretentious synthesizer background.
This is followed by two singles inspired by Asian music. Bollywood motifs are palpable in Sapphire: Sheeran raps in Punjabi, and Indian movie superstar Shahrukh Khan is featured in the song's video. Azizam is described as a "Persian" track: Sheeran even released a special version featuring Gugush, a legend of pre-revolutionary Iranian pop.
Another single, Old Phone, paints a curious picture. It's a song about Sheeran finding an old cell phone with "photos of a dead friend" and "messages from all his exes." At first glance, the theme is nostalgic and melancholic, but the track sounds surprisingly warm and human. There is no heaviness in it, it is devoid of straightforward cliches and is sustained with subtlety worthy of special praise. And most importantly, the Old Phone does not create an emotional failure at all after Sapphire and Azizam.
This part of the album sounds like a set of stadium anthems that need to be sung by the choir. It feels like we're looking at a truly renewed Sheeran: an artist who has rediscovered his lightness. And the name Play — "play" in the sense of the player's button, but also "play" as a mood — seems quite appropriate. Moreover, after the first four tracks, you believe that Sheeran is about to release a real classic album. That the redhead returned to the form of a hitmaker and came to remind everyone how to do it.
Songs by the family hearth
But this feeling goes away quickly. Play is not a classic album at all. His other half is drowning in cliches and cloying sentimentality. What stands out, as mentioned above, is the slightly Beatle song A Little More, but everything else goes nowhere.
In the tracks Symmetry and Don't Look Down, Sheeran, along with producer Ilya Salmanzade, once again tries to use an oriental flavor, as in Sapphire and Azizam, but the attempts turn out to be faded. The musical fragments with melismatics resemble samples from the Sufi qawwali genre, but they are presented schematically and without ideas. They seem to be not fully integrated into the compositions and sound like cultural phantoms.
But it's even more painful to listen to the rest of the tracks: almost all of them are ballads or semi—ballads about marital happiness and love for his wife Cherry Seaborn (in fact, all the songs on Play are dedicated to her, except Opening and Old Phone). It is characteristic how straightforward the lyrics are: "I die a little every time you leave home" (Slowly), "I swear to love you always and never let go" (The Vow), "You shine so much that I don't need a camera to remember you" (Camera).
Ed Sheeran and his wife
On the one hand, it's humanly joyful for Sheeran-as happy as it's possible to be for a multi—millionaire with unlimited access to expensive therapists, yoga retreats, travel, and other ways to straighten your mind. On the other hand, listening to all this is really hard. One of the most obvious examples is In Other Words, a monstrous musicianship ballad that evokes associations with Elton John's worst tracks of the mid-90s. Or with a song that Chris Martin could compose with his left heel, record a demo, and delete from his hard drive the next morning. The tracks from the traditional extended edition of the album are also not convincing.
Sheeran has always tried to look like "his boyfriend" — a little awkward, outwardly far from glossy, as if he happened to be at the top of pop music. His image was and still is based on deliberate simplicity and modesty. And his songs were always the same, with lyrics that looked like phrases from postcards from an online messenger or quotes from love posts. In this sense, it is not surprising that a new turn in his life — newfound stability, family happiness and unconditional love — is eventually expressed in a set of stamps. Everything is natural: after all, all happy families are equally happy.
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