Ed Sheeran reveals new album '-' and opens up on wife's medical scare
Sheeran's new album, prounounced "Subtract," will arrive May 5.
Ed Sheeran is adding to fans' lives by giving them a new album: "-," pronounced "Subtract," is due out May 5.
This is the latest installment in Sheeran's mathematics-themed albums, following 2011's "+" ("Plus"), 2014's "x" ("Multiply"), 2017's "÷" ("Divide") and 2021's "=" ("Equals").
Sheeran, 32, wrote and produced the album with Aaron Dessner of The National, who worked with his pal Taylor Swift as a producer on her 2020 albums "folkore" and "evermore" and co-wrote songs on the 3am and Deluxe editions of her 2022 album "Midnights."
In a lengthy statement, Sheeran revealed that he'd been working on "-" for 10 years, "trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be."
He continued, saying last year "a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art."
Those things, all of which he said happened within a month, were the death of his best friend Jamal Edwards, a lawsuit accusing him of plagiarizing his hit song "Shape of You" -- a British high court judge later ruled in April 2022 that Sheeran "neither deliberately nor subconsciously" copied Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue's 2015 song "Oh Why" -- and a serious medical issue faced by his wife Cherry Seaborn, who was at the time expecting their second child.
"My pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth," Sheeran explained. "I was spiraling 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 a result of these events coinciding, Sheeran said he turned to songwriting, which he called "my therapy" and the thing that "helps me make sense of things." In just over a week, Sheeran said he had "replaced a decade's worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts" by just writing "whatever tumbled out."
"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," he said. "This album is purely that. It's opening the trapdoor into my soul."
Sheeran added, "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."
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