Ed Sheeran ought to be celebrating as he reaches the end of his mathematical symbols album series with – (Subtract). Beginning with + all the way back in 2011, you’d definitely need a calculator to get your head around album sales of over 150 million, song streaming figures commonly in the multiple billions and a world tour second only to Elton John’s as the highest grossing of all time.
Instead, as the weary acoustic strum of Boat opens his fifth album, he’s in a dark place. He’s been in court defending himself against song theft accusations for the second time in just over a year, this time in the US, where the estate of the co-writer of Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On claims that Sheeran’s Thinking Out Loud counts as copyright infringement.
