Ed Sheeran: Azizam review – a cross-cultural Persian experiment … which sounds incredibly English
(Asylum Records)After a couple of earthy, rootsy albums, Sheeran emphatically returns to pop with another of his indelible hooks, surrounded by Middle Eastern instrumentationEd Sheeran’s new single arrives at an interesting point in his career. His last albums, 2023’s Subtract and Autumn Variations, felt not unlike a riff on Taylor Swift’s pandemic-era Folklore and Evermore: two albums released in the same year, produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, a little woodier and more understated in tone than usual. Subtract in particular enjoyed the kind of critical acclaim that Sheeran’s work seldom attracts. They were also the first Sheeran albums not to yield a billion-streaming track: his commercial zenith, 2017’s Divide, contained five, among them Shape of You, one of only two songs in history have to topped 4bn streams on Spotify.Maybe a muted commercial response was part of the plan (or rather, a relatively muted commercial response by Sheeran’s standards: Subtract still went to No 1 in 13 countries). Having spent a decade voraciously pursuing vast success – and shifting 200m albums in the process – perhaps Sheeran had decided the moment was right to deliberately pull back, to do precisely what he wanted regardless of the sales figures. Continue reading...
(Asylum Records)
After a couple of earthy, rootsy albums, Sheeran emphatically returns to pop with another of his indelible hooks, surrounded by Middle Eastern instrumentation
Ed Sheeran’s new single arrives at an interesting point in his career. His last albums, 2023’s Subtract and Autumn Variations, felt not unlike a riff on Taylor Swift’s pandemic-era Folklore and Evermore: two albums released in the same year, produced by the National’s Aaron Dessner, a little woodier and more understated in tone than usual. Subtract in particular enjoyed the kind of critical acclaim that Sheeran’s work seldom attracts. They were also the first Sheeran albums not to yield a billion-streaming track: his commercial zenith, 2017’s Divide, contained five, among them Shape of You, one of only two songs in history have to topped 4bn streams on Spotify.
Maybe a muted commercial response was part of the plan (or rather, a relatively muted commercial response by Sheeran’s standards: Subtract still went to No 1 in 13 countries). Having spent a decade voraciously pursuing vast success – and shifting 200m albums in the process – perhaps Sheeran had decided the moment was right to deliberately pull back, to do precisely what he wanted regardless of the sales figures. Continue reading...
