Ed Sheeran’s ÷ — or simply Divide — magnifies the singer’s stylistic signatures while smoothing off his odder edges
Ed Sheeran’s third album will almost certainly be the biggest selling British album of the year. There are 12 tracks, and each is perfectly formed. This is a set of direct, punchy, melodic, catchy, meaningful songs, with verses and choruses in all the right places. They are beautifully sung and delivered with a compelling and endearing mixture of charismatic swagger and emotional honesty. The quality doesn’t let up from beginning to end. It is very good. And if you can feel a “but” coming on, it is a very small one. Like Adele’s third blockbuster album, 25, it does not push into new places or extend the range of the artist, rather it offers a perfect synthesis of everything that has made them so universally popular.
It is named after the mathematical division symbol but not, I suspect, for any reason more compelling than branding. His 2011 debut was named + (“plus”) and the 2014 blockbuster follow up was x (“multiply”).
That one did indeed multiply Sheeran’s appeal, establishing the acoustic singer-songwriter as one of the biggest stars in contemporary pop. But this is not an album of division so much as consolidation, and I don’t think they have a mathematical symbol for that. Maybe he should have called it Ed² (“squared”). For better or worse, it’s an Ed Sheeran album that sounds pretty much exactly like what people think an Ed Sheeran album should sound like.
Evidently he is not ready for subtraction yet, although he did take a year off in 2016. He opens his new album with Eraser, a snappy folk rap in which he looks back on his