“Rain keeps beating on the rooftop, pouring into death.”
There are few names bigger in the contemporary pop industry than Ed Sheeran. At two Melbourne shows earlier this year he played to over 215,000 fans. Yet, there is something intensely honest about his upcoming, stripped-back album, Subtract, played to an eager, intimate crowd of 3,000 at New York’s King’s Theatre this past Monday, April 10th. Even so, Sheeran manages to turn the experience of an already modest crowd into a single man, on stage, pouring out these parts of his heart to cameras for the first time. Debuting “Boat”, the opening track, at the much-larger Accor Arena in Paris earlier this month, he speaks to a hushed audience: “I trust you with this. If I play this to you, just be respectful and listen. I’m choosing not to wait until the album is out to play it; I want to play it for you guys because we’re having a special night.”
Rarely are amateur live recordings enjoyable, or even listenable, but here, in the numerous videos you can find online of this experience, Sheeran’s performance is crystal clear as he delivers song after song of new, heart-wrenching material. A long-overdue successor to debut album Plus, Subtract is a return to the singer-songwriter’s roots in more ways than one. “I had an interesting beginning of last year where I had a few challenges in my personal life and my family life, and I wrote over the course a week.” Before each track, Sheeran delivers a lengthy and vulnerable explanation of the stories, the messages, the feelings that drove their creation, from the depths of grief over the loss of his friend, Jamal Edwards, to the joys of fatherhood. It is simultaneously an intimate and global experience, as many in the crowd hold up phones and record every moment, including Subtract in its entirety. Sheeran knows people are listening, but at the same time you get the impression that he speaks also to himself.
Subtract, in its base form, has been in the works for over ten years, initially intended to follow up 2011’s Plus. However, any time the tracklist grew, Sheeran would cannibalise songs for other projects, making their way onto the likes of Multiply, Divide, and Equals. This iteration of the record, produced in collaboration with Aaron Dessner (The National, Taylor Swift), is comprised of fourteen songs, including one which retains its original form, almost entirely, from Subtract‘s original composition. Yet that is not the extent of their partnership, as the duo have written an entire second album which is currently being mixed. As for Subtract, it is every bit as raw and authentic as expected.
BOAT:
“This song I wrote about feeling like I was drowning under waves and not able to get out.” “Boat” is a testament to the vocalist’s resilience and resolve, pledging that, in the face of the many struggles which influenced Subtract, he would not give in. “The waves won’t break my boat” is repeated throughout, opening a very turbulent album with a strong, reassuring message of hope in the face of adversity. The guitarwork is every bit as raw and vulnerable as the lyricism, throwing back to the likes of “This” and Sheeran’s long-term inspiration, Damien Rice.
SALT WATER:
“Salt Water” deals with battling suicidal thoughts, a theme later explored in “Borderline”. Written about the darkest nights of Sheeran‘s life, it was the second song finished of this iteration of Subtract, thus serving, alongside “Boat”, as the foundation for the record’s dark tone. The singer-songwriter, recently turned thirty-two, has never shied away from heavy topics, but rarely has he approached them with such persistent and explicit lyricism. In fact, an interview with Rolling Stone records that three tracks were scrapped for being ‘too joyous.’ Sheeran addresses the crowd at King’s Theatre frankly. “We all have ups and downs, some more than others, and my sort of low points have been from childhood into teen years and growing up. There’s highs and lows, and this was a particularly low moment of wondering what if?”
EYES CLOSED:
“Eyes Closed”, the record’s lead single, opens with a pizzicato riff as it eases the listener into a very emotionally difficult track which recounts Sheeran’s experiences with grief and denial following the loss of his close friend, Jamal Edwards. “I had written it about my best mate who died suddenly last year,” he explains to the crowd. “My way of processing stuff, anything, is writing songs. A lot of the time, the songs don’t necessarily get released. … They’re all me processing shit and dealing with stuff. This is a song that I wrote and it’s just a song about loss; for me it’s specifically about Jamal, but for you guys it can be about anything.” One of the most startling things about the approach to Subtract is the openness with which the British singer-songwriter both explains his own struggles and acknowledges that the music is also the listener’s own to map their own experiences onto.
LIFE GOES ON:
“When Jamal passed away, I wanted the world to stop, like it did for the queen; when the queen died, everything came to a halt. And it kind of did, for the day. Jamal was of Caribbean descent, and in Caribbean culture they do this thing called the Nine Night. Every night of the week you go to the family home and everyone gathers, and everyone remembers the stories, and everyone drinks. It’s super sad and super intense but it’s kind of comforting, because you’re around everyone that he knew and everyone that he loved and you’re all sharing stories. Then on the ninth night, you have a big party, and then everyone just kind of gets back to ‘normal.’ I sort of didn’t feel like I wanted to. I know death and grief is a thing that everyone goes through, and everyone has jobs and everyone has lives, and everyone just has to get back to it. You’re sort of given this period of time where you’re expected to grieve and to be sad, and then that’s supposed to end and you’re supposed to go back to normal life. I just didn’t feel like I wanted to, and I still don’t feel like I want to. I don’t feel like you have to get over stuff. I don’t think it’s something that is a must; I think it’s something you can live with and something that if you want to cry you can cry, if you want to remember in a nice way… On his birthday last year, I went out and remembered him and had fun. You can do things like that. It was just weird how life resumed.”
“Life goes on with you gone, I suppose. I sink like a stone.”
DUSTY:
“Being a parent in times of sadness, there’s a massive juxtaposition to it. I would go to bed after visiting Jamal’s mural. Two o’clock in the morning I’d go to bed and I’d cry myself to sleep, then I’d wake up at six with this ball of energy, this beautiful girl that’s jumping on me and being like, ‘let’s listen to music and eat porridge!’ I’m like, ‘yes, that’s exactly what I want to do.’ Kids know, but they don’t know; she could tell that I was sad but she was all about the vibes, that it’s morning time. That’s the wonderful thing about children: they can really lift your spirits in times like that. Me and my daughter have this routine in the morning where we pick a vinyl and we put on a vinyl, and we listen to breakfast while we listen to the vinyl. It was a thing I would look forward to. You’d have a night of real darkness and sadness, then you wake up to a just happy little girl.” On one particular occasion, Sheeran explains, the record of choice was Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis, and that moment inspired “Dusty”. His children make his mornings, bringing light to ward off the quiet darkness of the previous night.
END OF YOUTH:
“It’s all still pretty recent. It’s real life. What I found from going through grief was [that] all of my friends that had been through it that hadn’t really spoken about it … when it happened, they all started opening up to me about stuff. It was kind of like this invisible barrier came down. I spoke to my mum and dad in depth about stuff, and my friend whose mum had passed away and my friend whose dad had passed away. It had been this kind of open dialogue. The one thing I found was that whatever age you are when it happens – and it’s not just grief; it can be depression or anxiety or anything – anytime that you feel real adult things in your life, it ends your youth. I am fortunate enough that I was in my thirties when that was the first time I felt that sort of pain. Some of my friends lost their parents when they were like six, and twelve, and fourteen. The lens of it, you realise that people just lose their youth instantly and they have to deal with adult shit. It’s just unfair.” Towards the end of both the preamble and the performance, Sheeran’s voice cracks with emotion.
COLOURBLIND:
“I feel that the older I get, and the deeper I get into my marriage and [the more] in love I get, you sort of realise that the reason, like, my parents have been together for so long is that love evolves. It is not what it is at the start, but that doesn’t make it… It evolves into these different things, and it’s different ‘colours.’ You’re in love with people for the ‘bright red fire’ or the really ‘chilled blue’ or just pure fucking anger. There’s many layers, and I find love is colours. To be truly in love, I guess, you have to be colourblind at some points.”
He laughs and acknowledges the absurdity of the analogy, as some will find the synaesthesia melodramatic. But the message is poignant; love is not perfect, but it is a collaboration, and even if the relationship changes that does not mean it is for the worse. In fact, it often grows stronger, like a candle that burns slow, rather than the short-lived incandescence of initial passion. This multi-faceted, dynamic nature of love is captured beautifully by the track’s opening lines: “Kaleidoscopic love – that is you and me.”
CURTAINS:
“I’m sure everyone here has had low points, and in those moments you want to close the world out and not see anyone. Draw [close] the curtains and be like, ‘I’m not seeing anyone.’ We all have amazing people in our lives that we love, that sense when those points happen, that can come in and draw [open] the curtains, let the sunshine in, and motivate you to get out and feel better.” Sonically, the track mirrors its themes beautifully; it begins slowly, melancholically, and gradually grows in tempo, in rhythm, until it ‘opens up.’ Much like how healing is not an immediate process, but the sunshine is always there waiting, beyond the curtains, for when we are ready. “Curtains” concludes on a guitar solo which perfectly encapsulates this hopeful breakpoint.
BORDERLINE:
“I’ve been writing songs since I’ve been eleven years old. My way of writing songs has always been, pick up a guitar, strum a chord, and write the song. That’s always been the way I’ve written, it’s always been the way I’ve known other people to write, and then I met Aaron [Dessner]. Aaron sent me a folder of instrumentals, fully made instrumentals with beautiful soundscapes. … It was so freeing to not have to think of anything, really, because the music was there, and in the music I was hearing melodies, I was hearing words, and I would just write the songs so quickly. They’d come out and there would be no like, ‘why am I saying that, that sounds weird, what’s this?’ Every single word came out so easily. That was the first batch he sent me. … I had some heavy health complications with my wife [Cherry Seaborn] when she was pregnant, and I rang up Aaron when I got the news. I was like, ‘dude, I need you to send me some instrumentals. I’ve got loads of shit in my head and I need to put down something.’ He sent me seven instrumentals and I sent seven songs back in about two-and-a-half hours. I remember sitting in my house, and I had a laptop and a guitar. He’d send the instrumentals, and it was just brain-to-page that it came out. This was the first song that I wrote for that.“
“Borderline” picks up the message of healing once again, but this time it is more introspective, dealing with those moments when you feel like there isn’t a path to getting better. Gentle keys and subtle strings set the stage for Sheeran’s haunting lyricism, where he is perched upon the edge, unsure if he can go on.
“I fear running from the light. Engulfed in darkness … Wondering why I’m stuck on the borderline. Which way will I…”
“So I will pour another drink. I try to drown the pain … I shut off the things I think, ’cause nothing good will ever come from worrying.”
SPARK:
“As I’ve grown and gone through life, I’m a very sentimental person. I get quite attached to things, and I’m sort of learning as I grow older that life is in chapters. The chapter you’re on when you’re in your teenage years, when you’re in your twenties, whatever, isn’t necessarily that you’re dealing with when you’re thirty-two. That’s not a bad thing, either. It’s good to move on in life, and sort of always look forward rather than looking back. That’s a song basically about that, you know, chucking everything in a fire and knowing that the original spark which set that fire alight will survive.”
Here, one can see the rather dichotomous and diverse nature of Subtract’s messages, as Sheeran calls back to “Life Goes On”, wherein he comments it’s up to the individual to decide when it’s time to move on but that moving on can also be a choice. It is not, in his view, necessarily. He is open that he does not want to move on from the grief of losing his best friend. But “Spark” acknowledges that there are some things which do hold him back, and those he wants to turn the page and move on from. The reference to chapters of life, too, builds upon a line from “Borderline”, that ‘every chapter [particularly of sadness] has an end.’
VEGA:
“This is a song that was in the batch of seven songs that Aaron sent when we got the bad news [a diagnosis of his wife’s tumour whilst pregnant with their second child]. With Aaron’s music, you listen to it and words come out, and you don’t know what the fuck they mean sometimes. [It had] this line in it where I was like singing ‘it burns like hell to be Vega.’ I was like, ‘what the fuck does that mean?’ It turns out that Vega is a burning ball of gas – it’s a star – in a constellation [Lyra, the name coincidentally of his firstborn daughter]. I feel that people look at me as a star – I play music and make stuff – and sometimes stars bring light, but at the heart of it they’re just a massive ball of burning fucking gas. I wouldn’t want to be a massive ball of burning gas,” he jokes.
It is clear, however, that it is deeply personal. The song is about buckling under the pressure people are under, keeping things in, and subsequently burning out. It’s something that we all feel, whether pop star or student, which the track itself acknowledges: “Same problems, different oceans.” There are some subtly genius lyrics here as Vega is personified, warning against the dangers of burnout and not taking time for oneself in the name of success. “Pain comes at a cost, but we’ve got this. Need respite, bleed time dry. She’ll be fine, she’ll be fine.” The last lines, repeated like a mantra, are of course a lie, reflecting the desperate reality that not only we do we tell ourselves we can push through something, but that people often also turn a blind eye, believing the same.
“Rain keeps beating on the rooftop, pouring into death. I guess this is human nature. We are made to shine like stars but that don’t mean it don’t burn like hell to be Vega.”
SYCAMORE:
“This next song again was a part of the seven songs [instrumentals] that Aaron sent to me. I feel like going into too much detail, because it’s such personal shit, it feels uncomfortable … but at the same time, I sent this record to people when I finished it and they thought it was a breakup album. You have to give context to stuff, sometimes, because otherwise people don’t hear it. This song was written [when] we’d had the news. My wife and I were driving up to a cancer specialist in the north of London, and we don’t know what they’re going to say; all we know is that it’s bad news. It was just before we were driving up. … I feel like in life you’re born in love; you start life loved and you end life loved, and everything in between, hopefully, is love. It’s one of those where I wanted to write a hopeful chorus, like, ‘We’ve got this.’” The chorus, “In our story, it’s love in, love out / We are glorious,” tells it all.
NO STRINGS:
“No Strings”, Sheeran reveals, is a tribute to his wife and their unconditional love and support in times of struggle. “When I got married, my dad took me to one side and … he said congratulations and all this stuff, and he was like, ‘you’ll never know true marriage until it’s tested by grief and sickness.’ He’d had something in his past with my mum; they’d lost people early on in their marriage and it really brought them closer together. Sadness can really bring people closer together. Loss and trauma, and all of these things. It can obviously do the opposite, but when that bond happens it’s really difficult to break it. I, on the day, was like, ‘cool, cool,’ [because] I didn’t know. And then, years later this happens, and I kept saying to my wife when all this stuff was happening, I was just like, ‘If we get through this, we are good. Any obstacles can be thrown our way for however long and we can always look back at this time and say, you know what, we got through that, we can get through anything.’ … This is the final song on the record that is about all of this.”
“But this is no strings. You are who I love, and that won’t change when we’re falling apart. Yeah, this is no strings. You are who I love. It’s just growing pains.”
THE HILLS OF ABERFELDY:
“All of those songs on the record are a part of my life I don’t necessarily want to relive, but I think it was important for me as a human to go through, to experience, and grow up. But the reason that this song is the last song on the album is because I had made some tracks before remaking some tracks, and in my head the album would always end with this song. In all the iterations of it that I put together, it always ended with this song. I wrote this song back in 2012 with my really good friend Foy Vance, who’s a collaborator and a wonderful musician. We were on tour and he’d just moved into the highlands of Scotland, and he was like, ‘come up to the highlands, man, and let’s just fucking hang and jam and jump in the loch and drink whiskey and do all of these things.’ I was 21, and I grew up listening to Foy, going to his gigs. The reason I was so obsessed with the loop pedal is [that] Foy was one of the people I saw with a loop pedal, and I used to cover his songs in gigs. You can imagine I was buzzing to be in his presence and that he wanted to write a song with me. So we were up there, we were in the hills of Aberfeldy, and we wrote this song. I put it as the final song of Subtract back in 2012. I was like, ‘whenever Subtract comes out, this is the final song.’ Then all these iterations happened. I didn’t scrap it, but it was put to the side. Me and Aaron created this record that I feel really is Subtract, and I wanted to have a nod to what it used to be and put it on [the tracklist].”
The song speaks to the affection has for Aberfeldy, a Perthshire town which he has visited on multiple occasions since initially writing it in 2012. He has since also had an image of the local whiskey tattooed on his arm and remarked that “You can go to any Scots or Irish bar in the world and they have a bottle of Aberfeldy.” Distance and longing are a core element of the record’s closer, with the narrator lamenting that he may have walked too far and worrying about getting home. The allure of Aberfeldy (and the picturesque nature of the Scottish countryside) is too much. The folky track was clearly a thematic precursor to the singer’s 2017 hit “Galway Girl”, yet entirely stripped back in the largely acoustic soundscape of Plus. The performance concludes with the famous Scottish folk song “The Parting Glass”, which featured as a hidden track at the end of Sheeran’s debut album, completing the cycle of his mathematic notation records. It remains to be seen whether this will feature on the studio version of Subtract, but it would be all too fitting.
On May 3rd, Sheeran’s four-part documentation of the album’s creation process, The Sum of It All, will air on Disney+. “I’ve always been guarded of my personal life; the only documentary I’ve ever made has been one that focused on my songwriting,” the singer remarked on Instagram. “Initially the documentary was just that, a documentary on the formation of an album. But, as my life took a few twists and turns, the subject matter of the album changed, and so did the documentary. It became something completely different to what I thought it would be. I wanted to provide context to the album as it touches on very personal things, that we all experience. I knew if I made a documentary, I would want to put my trust in the hands of the director, so it wouldn’t be sculpted by me, and was actually an accurate reflection of who I am, even if it’s uncomfortable to watch.” The trailer, which you can watch here, shows Sheeran laughing, crying, loving – all the emotions expressed on Subtract. He puts it succinctly: “Everything that happens, I tend to write a song about it.”
Subtract will release May 5th via Asylum Records, and you can pre-order the album here.