Ed Sheeran is super chill for a guy who just released an album four years in the making

Ed Sheeran is everywhere right now thanks to a long-awaited new album that’s been in the works since 2017 (cast your minds back to those beautiful pre-COVID days). So of course, our Etalk: Off The Record podcast is catching up with an old friend, too.

Sheeran and Etalk go way back—to before the time he was a dad, a husband and a superstar selling out Wembley Stadium. Danielle Graham caught up with Sheeran virtually just before the singer tested positive for COVID (don’t worry, he’s doing fine) to talk about everything that went into "=" (pronounced "equals") which dropped this week.

Ed began working on the album as his twenties came to a close and he views its title as a metaphor for all the befores and afters he experienced during that time. Behind him is the chaos of “up all night partying” and ahead of him are peaceful date nights with his wife, Cherry, or evenings reading bedtime stories to his daughter, Lyra, who just turned one this past summer. 

“Chaos and calm” is how Sheeran describes his current world, but the chaos is of a different variety and there seems to be a stronger emphasis on the calm. Both in the new album and in the interview, Sheeran talks about a new focus on an effort to be present: no phones at the dinner table or on nights out with his wife is a policy he lives by. He’s abandoned what he calls the “If people don't post on Instagram do they exist?” trap he once fell into, using social media to promote his work and drawing the line there.

He’s content with the changes his life has undergone in the past few years and it’s caused him to reevaluate what really matters. People told him that playing Wembley Stadium would be the biggest moment of his career and he believed it—until it wasn't.

“It just felt like a concert,” says Sheeran, who said that the highlight was finishing the performance and going backstage to have a beer with his wife. 

The interview touches on all the BIG topics (life, death, birth, love) and Ed seems to have gained some serious perspective on all of them. When asked what advice he’d give his younger self, Sheeran said, “Don’t be afraid of failure—you learn everything from your failures and nothing from your success.” And with those incredibly sage words, he was off to have some lasagna and watch Ted Lasso with Cherry.

Already binged the entire Lasso catalogue and looking for something else to do? Catch up with this week’s second installment of Off The Record in which the Etalk team make their predictions for an upcoming Kardashian wedding: Kourtney’s nuptials to rocker Travis Barker, who has his own history with the Kardashian family from back when Kim was Paris Hilton’s “closet girl.” 

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