Album will be available in standard and deluxe edition
Ed Sheeran has announced that his fifth studio album, – (Subtract), will be released on May 5th via Atlantic Records. The acoustic album will conclude his mathematic album era that began more than ten years ago with + (Plus). The Irish pop star co-produced and co-wrote the album with The National’s Aaron Dessner.
“I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art,” Sheeran shares.
“Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts.
“Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth. My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly, and I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was spiralling through fear, depression and anxiety. I felt like I was drowning, head below the surface, looking up but not being able to break through for air.
“As an artist I didn’t feel like I could credibly put a body of work into the world that didn’t accurately represent where I am and how I need to express myself at this point in my life.
“This album is purely that. It’s opening the trapdoor into my soul. For the first time, I’m not trying to craft an album people will like, I’m merely putting something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life.
“This is last February’s diary entry and my way of making sense of it. This is Subtract.”
The project will be released on multiple formats including CD, Deluxe CD, LP, Deluxe LP, cassette and digital.
The Limited Edition Deluxe double LP release features a beautiful heavyweight trifold outer sleeve with embossing and spot gloss, as well as a set of seven double sided 12-inch art prints exclusive to the deluxe album. It also includes a CD copy and inner sleeve artwork includes full album lyrics and credits.
The deluxe album includes nine bonus tracks, five of which are exclusive to the deluxe album format. The tracks will not be made available anywhere else. Four of the exclusive tracks are included on both the vinyl and CD discs with the fifth being contained within an exclusive artworked postcard flexi-disc.
Sheeran will also play a “mini tour” to launch the album and will be the only UK and European shows the English star plays this year. Sheeran will play Manchester on March 23rd with stops at London’s O2 arena for two nights, Glasgow and Dublin before wrapping in Paris on April 2nd.
Sheeran will follow the trek with a North American run of dates that kicks off May 6th at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX. Houston, Tampa, Atlanta, Nashville, Detroit, Denver and others are also on the bill for North America. The tour wraps September 23rd with a performance at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.
- Boat
- Salt Water
- Eyes Closed
- Life Goes On
- Dusty
- End Of Youth
- Colourblind
- Curtain
- Borderline
- Spark
- Vega
- Sycamore
- No Strings
- The Hills Of Aberfeldy
