As I finished writing this review, the news broke that Ed Sheeran had been cleared of infringing copyright in his latest high-profile trial, one that has been so frustrating that the singer-songwriter threatened to “quit music” if the courts didn’t find in his favour. He is also mourning the recent death of his Irish grandmother, the subject of his 2017 song Galway Girl. Appositely, the British singer-songwriter’s fifth studio album details what an absolute humdinger your early 30s can be. Billed as his starkest and most candid record yet, – (AKA Subtract) concludes Sheeran’s run of mathematically themed albums with a diaristic account of how slings and arrows can come at a successful singer-songwriter, often out of nowhere.
The title suits the contents. There is one major loss at the heart of this record, and some near misses; you may consider Sheeran’s recent period of depression – another of Subtract’s recurrent themes – as a kind of defining emptiness around which the album orbits. The most obvious absence in these 14 tracks is that of Jamal Edwards, the late SBTV founder who died suddenly in January 2022. He and Sheeran had been close, to the point where many had wondered if they were more than friends – a rumour Sheeran can now chuckle fondly over in interviews. A grime entrepreneur whose DIY YouTube channel did much to crowbar Black British music towards the mainstream, Edwards’s early support lent the singer-songwriter no little credibility, often in short supply from other quarters.
