Album Review: Ed Sheeran - Equals (=)

I once had an argument with some friends over the film ‘Yesterday’. They suggested that it would be impossible to perfectly recreate even one song from an artist if you could never listen to it again, let alone a whole discography. I still strongly disagree with this theory, and I feel that I could reconstruct the majority of works from multiple artists, but none more than Ed Sheeran. It is understandable, then, that I was pretty excited for his newest release, Equals (=), at the end of October.

There is something to be said for listening to an album as it has been curated, cancelling the shuffle feature and listening to the songs in the order that they have been placed, particularly for the first listen. For Equals (=), I found this more powerful than with many other albums, as although the album combines a variety of the different sounds which Ed Sheeran has explored thus far is his career, they are specifically placed to replicate the randomness of the emotion which life can evoke from us.

We follow Ed’s emotions as he progresses to the next stage in life

The album opens with some of the most upbeat, generically pop tunes, including ‘Tides’, which has the most similar sound to Sheeran’s last album Divide (÷) and one of the singles from the album, ‘Shivers’. ‘First Times’ and ‘Bad Habits’ lead on from these, both songs with more nostalgic elements, but whilst the first is a slower, more loving song to his wife, the latter has more sense of nostalgia for his wilder partying days, such as we might have been used to in Multiply (x).

As is so often the case with Ed Sheeran, he balances the upbeat pop songs with slower, more emotional tunes. ‘The Joker and the Queen’ is the only slow song on the album, and feels the most different from Ed’s recent music, but the use of strings to accompany the lyrics is quite beautiful. ‘Leave your Life’, and ‘Love in Slow Motion’ are less acoustic and return to the traditional loop-style beat which we are used to, but are still gentle and emotional. Then, sandwiched between, are ‘2step’ and ‘Stop the Rain’, songs which would not be out of place at a house party.

You can feel his growth since the release of his last solo album in 2017

The last songs on the album are calmer, portraying perhaps a maturing Ed. Whilst the upbeat songs of the start convey the influences from his youth, you can feel his growth since the release of his last solo album in 2017. The grief of ‘Visiting Hours’ is intense, however the gentleness of Sheeran’s song to his child, ‘Sandman’, reminds us of the circle of life. Whilst we experience sadness when people are taken from the world, this can almost accentuate the joy we find in the innocence and future potential which we are able to observe in children. ‘Be Right Now’, the final song, starts fairly intensely with a deep beat, but ends gently, with the final line accompanied by no backing music at all. The song is a reflection of the album as a whole, and perhaps of Sheeran’s discography in general.

More than any of his past albums, and despite the combination of sounds on the album, Equals (=) feels cohesive. We follow Ed’s emotions as he progresses to the next stage in life, marrying his girlfriend and becoming a new father all in the space of the past few years. It radiates a feeling of finding his people and his place in the world, following the wilder, younger sounds of Plus (+), Multiply (x) and Divide (÷). Equals (=) serves as a love letter to Ed Sheeran’s family, to his fans, and to himself.