Ed Sheeran talks about the world around him

“Last fall, I realized that my friends and I were going through a lot of changes. After the heat of the summer, everything had calmed down, settled down, collapsed, crashed, or imploded.” With this thought Ed Sheeran announced the release of his new album on September 29, 2023 “Autumn Variations”. One year later we propose you to read our review of the British musician’s latest album.

It doesn’t even sound like a real album. It seems more like a “lateral” project, a separate parenthesis in the discography of the red singer-songwriter from Halifax, a bit like “No.6 collaborations project” was in 2019: it is no coincidence that they are the only albums recorded by Ed Sheeran to have a title other than a mathematical symbol. Listening to it, this “Autumn variations” sounds like a collection of outtakes to share with fans via Bandcampeven if in reality it isn’t: it is Sheeran himself, in the booklet, who spoils that the album opens a tetralogy which will be completed with the releases of “Winter variations”, “Spring variations” and “Summer variations”. “-” last May closed a cycle. And it is from there that the voice of “Shape of you” starts again in opening a new chapter of his career: at his side we still find Aaron Dessner of the National, now specialized in taking record-breaking pop stars out of their comfort zones. He had done it with Taylor Swift’s “Foklore/Evermore” diptych, now he does it with Ed Sheeran, transforming the star accustomed to filling large arenas into a Intimate and thoughtful folk-country minstrel.

The British singer-songwriter had called “-” his “Nebraska”: “My plan is to record a lo-fi album that will be the least sold of my career, but the most loved,” he said about the album, citing one of the milestones of Bruce Springsteen’s discography. “Autumn variations” is not his “Born in the USA”, the album with which in 1984 the Boss reacted to the depression he had written and sung about in the previous album. AND his “Born in the UK”. It’s in his British rootsamong dear old habits, lifelong friends and the places where he grew up, that Ed found serenity after the darkest period of his life and career so far, the one that had inspired the songs of “-”: his wife Cherry’s fight against cancer, the legal battle to defend himself from the accusation of plagiarism for “Shape of you”, the death of his best friend Jamal Edwards (the YouTuber who discovered and launched it).

“Writing songs helped me understand my feelings and accept what was happening. I also wrote some songs from my friends’ points of view, to capture how they and I saw the world at that time,” he explains he, who in the songs that make up “Autumn variations” doesn’t just look inside himself, but also talks about the world around him.

The album’s title was borrowed from a work by the British composer Edward Elgarwho lived between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: “My father and my brother told me about this composer who wrote Enigma Variations, in which each of the 14 compositions was about one of his friends. That’s what inspired me to make this album.” Never mind that certain lyrics are a little more cloying than usual, starting with that of “England”, the ideal heart of the album, which sounds like the perfect soundtrack to promote tourism in England: “Take a walk and feel like everything will be fine / It’s a new day and this is England,” he sings.

It is the work done by Aaron Dessner on the sound that is most intriguing. The approach is a bit à la.Rick Rubin: Dessner continued to remove, rather than add. The busker’n’beats style that made Ed Sheeran the best-selling male artist of the last ten years is brought to the essentials here, with guitars, some programming here and there, lo-fi Bandcamp atmospheres, in fact.

They are songs, those of “Autumn variations”, which if dressed differently could grind millions of streams and explode the arenas: in the end Ed Sheeran’s writing remains the same, made of irresistible hookswhich stick to your ears and never go away, as confirmed – among others – by the same “Plastic bag” and “American Town”, chronicle of a trip by an Englishman (and an Englishwoman) to New York . But evidently in this phase of his life and career Ed is looking for something else from his music. The catchphrases can wait.