Edward Christopher Sheeran, MBE (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (pronounced "plus"), was released in September 2011. It topped the UK and Australian charts, reached number five in the US, and has since been certified eight-times platinum in the UK.
The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John.
Ed Sheeran Takes on Death and Depression, Unflinchingly, in the Surprising ‘-‘: Album Review
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic Well, that was the weirdest “album setup promo” week ever. Which is a cheeky way of saying that Ed Sheeran has gotten the amount of press that any artist could only dream of in the days leading up to a new release, albeit not for the project itself, but as the defendant in a copyright infringement trial that, after eight years after a lawsuit was first filed, coincidentally ended on the day before the release of his new record.
In an instance of weird serendipity, the case did what a record company would hope any album-launch campaign would: it put the artist not just in the headlines but made him seem infinitely more likeable, given how much of the public was rooting for him to prevail, even people that never thought they liked Ed Sheeran.
So it should be feel like a victorious moment, right? Except that the new album in question, “-“ (which we will further render as “Subtract” for clarity purposes), is not the kind of album that lends itself to big grins and flashing the “V” sign.
Quite the opposite: it’s as sharp a left turn into themes of death and depression as any pop superstar has ever made. The album is unflinching, in that regard, without any of the sops to “here’s a token banger for the radio” that you might expect from anyone with such a downtrodden collection to sell.
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