Ed Sheeran had to take some time off to remember how to be a regular guy, he tells
Jack van Beynen.
Ed Sheeran is a hard worker. Any fan of the singersongwriter from Suffolk, England, will tell you how he pushes himself to tour more, meet more fans, do more press, write more songs than any of his fellow musicians.
So it came as a shock to his legions of admirers when, at the end of 2015, he said he was taking a year off from music.
Sheeran was in Auckland, the last date on his Multiply tour, when he announced it would be his last gig for some time.
Was it hard for such a notorious workaholic to take a break? Sheeran says no.
‘‘It would have been, but it was like a natural end to the Multiply campaign. I think if I was halfway through the campaign I would kind of be like, I should be doing more, but we’d sold I think 14 million copies of Multiply and I think nine [million] of Plus, and done a five-year tour, and we kind of got to a point of, we’re done. There wasn’t really much else we could squeeze out of it.’’
It’s not like Sheeran has been twiddling his thumbs during his time off, though.
As well as travelling the world (including an incognito trip to our wee corner), founding a record label, and getting his face sliced by a swordweilding member of the royal family, Sheeran has been working on new music.
His latest album Divide came out this week, with more of Ed than any of his previous efforts. Fans have always loved Sheeran for the way he reveals himself in his songs, but on Divide he’s also credited with production duties too. He even painted the album’s cover.
Sheeran says being open and honest in his creative endeavours makes him a better artist – although it can take a toll on his personal relationships.
‘‘I don’t know why you’d be a musician if you didn’t want an outlet for honesty and stuff like that.
‘‘Holding stuff back doesn’t work out if you want to be that sort of open artist, which is bad for my personal relationships with people, but I do think it’s the way to be a better artist.’’
He credits listening to rapper Eminem with inspiring the honesty in his own work.
‘‘He definitely doesn’t mince his words, with his first couple of albums he definitely made a few enemies with ‘Holding stuff back doesn’t work out if you want to be that sort of open artist, which is bad for my personal relationships with people, but I do think it’s the way to be a better artist.’ family and friends,’’ Sheeran says.
‘‘I think that kind of honesty is needed in music.’’
Sheeran’s process for writing the tracks on Divide gives an insight into his fierce work ethic.
He originally wanted to play on the album’s title by splitting it into a double album, but was soon dissuaded.
‘‘I was told by everyone that double albums are just like musical w...-fests, and people don’t actually want to hear 24 songs,’’ he says.
Instead Sheeran opted to ‘‘divide’’ the album by genre, choosing a different sound for each of the tracks. He wrote dozens of songs in each genre, finally picking the best track of the bunch to feature.
‘‘With the first song it’s like a rap tune, so I wrote like 15 rap tunes and then picked the best one and put that in, and then the second song Castle on the Hill is supposed to be like a kind of Bruce Springsteen going back home anthem, so I wrote like a bunch of them and then picked the best one, and did that for all the tracks, and then left it for a bit and then scrapped like half of it and then tried to beat those songs ... there are a lot of outtakes,’’ he says.
Essentially, there must be something like 10 albums’ worth of songs from the Divide sessions sitting around unused – a mouth-watering thought for diehard Sheeran fans.
Sheeran’s break from music played an important part in Divide’s formation. Although he had many of the tracks down when he decided to take the time off, his holiday afforded him a fresh perspective.
‘‘I didn’t really touch a guitar while I was travelling – I suffered from it, because when I came back to trying to use the loop pedal and trying to remember my lyrics I was really out of practise, but it was a really important thing to do because I never really switched off.
‘‘I mean, having a nine-to-five job