In May last year, British singer Ed Sheeran said he was “on cloud nine” with the arrival of his second daughter. It was now known that the family would then be going through a difficult time. The artist’s wife, Cherry Seaborn, discovered a tumor during her pregnancy and “there was no possibility of treatment until delivery”, she says, through a Instagram post.
Cherry Seaborn and Ed Sheeran were married in 2019 and were parents, in August 2020, to Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran. Almost two years later, they welcomed their second daughter, Jupiter Seaborn Sheeran. The singer did not go into detail about the woman’s illness, but guarantees that the situation made him cross out “hundreds” of songs he had written for the fifth album, – (it reads subtract)whose release is revealed in the same publication and which the artist says was developed “between mourning and hope”.
I mourn because Ed Sheeran also lost one of his best friends, Jamal Edwards, the music manager who died last year, aged 32, following a heart attack from excessive cocaine use. The accumulation of situations made the musician fall into a “spiral” of depression. “He changed my life, my mental health and ultimately the way I look at music,” he declares.
While dealing with his wife’s illness, the artist faced a court case over plagiarism charges brought by the authors of Let’s get it on, by Marvin Gaye, who said the song was similar to thinking out loud. It was the second lawsuit of this nature that Sheeran faced, since in 2017 he had been brought to justice for the success shape of you.
The album – (subtract) is the fifth studio work and seems to complete the math titles: + (plus), x (multiply), ÷ (divide) It is = (equals). The project, explained, it was all written in a week, while dealing with an outpouring of emotions “between fear, depression and anxiety”. He asserts: “For the first time I’m not trying to create an album that people will like, I’m just putting out something that’s honest and true and reflects where I am in my adult life.”
The full album is expected to be released on May 5th. Before that, at the end of March, Ed Sheeran, who was in Portugal in 2019, will play some concerts in London, Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester and Paris, to launch the first single.
At 32, Ed Sheeran is one of the most successful British artists of the last decade, having spent a total of 79 weeks at the top of the UK charts, with eight singles #1, including global success Shape of You, and four studio albums. Entered for the first time tops British in 2011 with the single debut The A Team. The singer was in Portugal in 2019.