Ed Sheeran announces new album 'Autumn Variations,' out Sept. 29
Sheeran has been teasing fans that "Autumn is coming."
Grab your Pumpkin Spice Lattes because Ed Sheeran is embracing fall with the release of his new album "Autumn Variations" next month.
The album, out Sept. 29 via Sheeran's Gingerbread Man Records, is produced by Aaron Dessner of The National, who worked with Sheeran's pal Taylor Swift on her 2020 albums "Folklore" and "Evermore."
"Last autumn, I found that my friends and I were going through so many life changes. After the heat of the summer, everything either calmed, settled, fell apart, came to a head or imploded," Sheeran said of the project.
"I wrote songs, some from their perspectives, some from mine, to capture how they and I viewed the world at that time," he continued. "There were highs of falling in love and new friendships among lows of heartbreak, depression, loneliness and confusion."
Sheeran said the inspiration behind the album also came from his dad and brother telling him about an English composer named Edward Elgar, whose work "Enigma Variations" was comprised of 14 compositions with each one about a different one of his friends.
The Grammy winner said he and Dessner "clicked immediately" while working on his most recent album "-," pronounced "Subtract," and said "Autumn Variations" was "born out of that partnership." He said Dessner "has captured the feeling of autumn so wonderfully in his sonics."
Sheeran has been teasing fans on social media with hints that something was in the works.
He first shared a photo of himself standing in what appears to be a fall-like setting with leaves on the ground -- only for fans to realize, upon zooming in, that the leaves are actually images of Sheeran's face repeated over and over. He captioned the Aug. 1 post "Autumn is coming" and changed his Instagram bio to the same phrase.
Since then, he has released two cheeky infomercials -- the first on Aug. 16 and the other on Aug. 19 -- to hint that something was coming.
The release of "Autumn Variations" is timed one week after Sheeran wraps the North American leg of his Mathematics World Tour on Sept. 23.
See the full track list for "Autumn Variations" here:
1. "Magical"
2. "England"
3. "Amazing"
4. "Plastic Bag"
5. "Blue"
6. "American Town"
7. "That's On Me"
8. "Page"
9. "Midnight"
10. "Spring"
11. "Punchline"
12. "When Will I Be Alright"
13. "The Day I Was Born"
14. "Head > Heels"