Pop star Ed Sheeran had a bad year in 2022. His wife, seriously, he says was diagnosed with a tumor while pregnant and couldn’t be treated until their second child was born. He doesn’t say what happened, but presumably all is well now. Thank god.
Otherwise, he had a friend die, which is terrible.
But now he’s got a new album called “Subtract” — the Minus album — a single, and a tour. So everything will be alright.
In his statement, Ed mentions being in court defending himself. He has a nasty habit of nicking other people’s songs. This time it was about his hit “Thinking Out Loud” and Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On.” Let’s hope “Subtract” is minus any soundalikes.
His announcements are via Instagram, and they’re so off the cuff that Annie Leibovitz was hired to take the picture. It costs about $100,000 to get that non chalant.
“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.
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.
Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth. My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly, and I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was spiralling 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.
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. It’s 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.” – Ed
