No one is immune to depression or chaos. It can affect men, women, rich and poor. The person can be Ed Sheeran, who has been grinning and bearing all that life has to throw at him. For him, music acts like a release valve. There’s beauty when it’s bleak, he sings on Boat from his new album ‘-’, pronounced ‘Subtract’.
It captures a vulnerable side to the British singer-songwriter. “I sent this record to the record label, and they were like, ‘Is it a break-up album?’ And it’s not. It’s an album about... grief and depression and stuff. I feel that I don’t want to give too much context and hammer it home, because I don’t want people listening to Eyes Closed and be like: ‘This is about Ed’s friend that died.’ I want people to listen to it and relate it to their own life,” Sheeran has told Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
He is talking about SBTV founder Jamal Edwards, one of his closest friends who died last year from cocaine toxicity and resulting cardiac arrhythmia. He learned of his death the night after he had dinner with Taylor Swift and her former partner, the actor Joe Alwyn. At the dinner, he was texting Jamal about an upcoming video shoot.
“One of the things that I realised most in making this record and feeling the way I felt throughout Cherry’s (Seaborn, his wife) cancer diagnosis and Jamal dying, and the court case, and then Shane (Warne) dying first day of the court case.... Just all of these things like that, those days were horrible days. And then it gets to midnight and then the next day begins. And that’s either going to be another bad day or it might be a good day. The thing about grieving or even anxiety about Cherry’s health or feeling depressed and stuff like that, none of that matters with your kids because they’re just like... I would go to bed crying, I’d cry myself to sleep after spending hours and hours at Jamal’s mural and I’d get in at two and I just remember just sobbing. And then waking up in the morning at six to your daughter being like, ‘Hey, let’s eat porridge.’”
The singer’s childhood sweetheart, Cherry Seaborn, who he married in 2019, was told she had a tumour while pregnant with their second child. He was told that treatment was possible only “after the birth”. At the time, the star was in court facing a copyright trial.
The fight over chord progression
The lawsuit proved to be another low for Sheeran. A lawsuit was brought against him by the family of the late songwriter Ed Townsend for the chord progression on the Sheeran hit Thinking Out Loud and the similarity with the classic Marvin Gaye song, Let’s Get It On. It was an important win for Sheeran and all singers around the world, proving that chord progression doesn’t belong to any one singer. Blues songs may sound similar because of the chord progression and you will find variations of this progression in pop and R&B.It came to a point that Sheeran said if he loses the case, he would give up his career. He visited a New York court with a guitar to make the jury understand.
He told Lowe of Apple Music about how he felt now that the litigation is over. “There was a Rod Wave song where he used a sample of my song, U.N.I. (from his 2011 album, ‘+’), and he came to me and cleared it. And that’s like, yeah. The thing with these cases, it’s not usually songwriters that are suing songwriters. I mean sometimes it is, but it’s not... I feel like in the songwriting community, everyone sort of knows that there are four chords primarily that are used and there are eight notes. And we work with what we’ve got, with doing that. So I’ve even gone to artistes to clear songs. I had a song that I wrote for Keith Urban and it sort of sounded like a Coldplay song. So I emailed Chris Martin and I said: ‘This sounds like your tune. Can we clear it?’ And he went: ‘Don’t be ridiculous. No.’ And on the song I made sure they put, ‘I think it sounds like Everglow, Coldplay, but he was just like, nah, I know how songs are written. And I know you didn’t go into the studio and went, I want to write this.’”
The singer with his wife Cherry Seaborn
Getting over grief
Ultimately, his new album became a way to process his grief. It taught him how fragile life can be. “I played a show, and I went to a bar afterwards, and some of my fans from the show had ended up in the bar. I was talking to them, and they were like: ‘It’s weird. Grief is this really solitary thing that you are expected to grieve for X amount of time, and then get back to normal life and forget about it. It never happened. Why are you still sad 10 years on?’ They were saying having a record about it justifies living with it. Your life can fit around grief. You don’t have to get over anything. I will never, ever, ever get over Jamal dying at 31. I don’t want to, I don’t feel like I have to. I feel like, if I want to cry, I can cry…. My mum went through a massive loss when she was 28-29. Almost 30 and a bit years on, she still cries about it because it matters. You can’t just get over things. You can get over relationships. That’s fine. That’s part of life. You move from one thing to the other or whatever. But loss and grief, especially when it’s sudden... maybe even when it’s not sudden,” Sheeran has said.But now he finds himself in a better position and helping him are his children. “I remember being younger, and I just didn’t care. I just didn’t. Whatever happened to me happened. But I think, having kids, you’re like, if I’m having really, really low periods in my life, it’s affecting my children. And that does matter.”
Like he sings on Life Goes On: Tell me how/How my life goes on with you gone? Easy come, hard go/Then life goes on.