Ed Sheeran has revealed some new details about his as-yet untitled follow-up to 2017’s ‘Divide’.
Speaking to George Ezra on the musician’s new podcast, Sheeran admitted that the new record will move away from the pop sound that has been his recipe for success thus far.
The ‘Galway Girl’ singer intends to ‘control his fall’ before getting too big to compete with his last album, and wants to release something more personal, even if it doesn’t sell as many records.
“I feel like it’s dangerous to have a career that goes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and everything’s happening, because at some point it’s gonna drop,” he said.
“The next record that I’m making is not a pop album.
“The reason it’s not a pop album is people expect you to come and the next album they’re going to be like ‘it has to be bigger than ‘Shape of You’ and it has to sell more than this’, but if I control it and go ‘here’s a lo-fi record that I really fucking love,’ my fans are gonna be like ‘Yay!’, and the pop world are gonna be like ‘oh well, maybe the next one.’”
Sheeran continued: “If the next album does, like, 2 or 1 [million], or 500,000, it’s not a failure because I’ve made an album where I’m not trying to get there, so it’s not a failure. No one’s going to be like, ‘that’s a flop’. They’re going to be like, ‘that’s what he wants to do’.
He added: “The label hate that. The label really fucking hate that. They want a big pop album again but I think that shit’s dangerous.”
Sheeran expressed his desire to imitate Coldplay in their release of ‘Ghost Stories’ at the height of their success.
“My whole career I’ve studied Coldplay, and Coldplay are fucking geniuses. They did it with ‘Ghost Stories’. Ghost Stories was their artistic moment.”
In a video released last week, Taylor Swift mocked Sheeran for “peacocking” on the set of the musician’s ‘End Game’ music video.
Sheeran replied: “It’s only because you wear f—ing heels all the time!”