by Connie Kim

British singer Ed Sheeran came back from his one-year social media hiatus by tweeting for the first time in exactly 365 days. His first post? An image of a plain, light blue square. While this captionless image was an exciting notification for many Sheerios, as his die-hard fans would call themselves, little did the rest of us know that it was a hint of what was to come next.​ A few days after his social media revival, Sheeran announces the title of his new upcoming album, “Divide,” with the same blue photo being the main image for the album’s cover. Upon announcing the album’s title, he also released two new songs shortly after.

While one of his songs, “Shape of You,” was widely well received by the general public and landed the number one top spot on Spotify within a few hours of its initial release, I must say, as someone who appreciates Sheeran’s music, I was somewhat let down when I heard this song for the first time.

Now, I don’t consider myself to be a Sheerio, or whatever else the extreme fans might call themselves, but I liked his latest hits and the entirety of his last album. Sheeran introduced a different style of acoustic pop by rapping in a lot of his songs. In his previous album, he sings in a lyric, “I’m not a rapper, I’m a singer with a flow,” and I feel like that originality – and not to mention his talent in both vocal and instrumental aspects – is what branded this singer to stand out from the others.

“Shape Of You” is somewhat of a risk for Sheeran, as it challenges his original music style by incorporating a “Today’s Hits” type feel in the background music. A lot of other listeners say that the beginning of the song sounds very similar to Sia’s “Cheap Thrills,” which is nowhere within the singer’s established theme of music. Even though the song is catchy, it doesn’t capture the originality that initially started my appreciation for Sheeran’s work.

Lyrically, it threw me off. I think that Sheeran is excellent at telling a story through description – a great example would be the use of the title in itself; we can assume he’s speaking about a lady’s silhouette or something along those lines – but he doesn’t actually have to say what he’s talking about for us to understand.  So it threw me off when he chose to go straight to it by stating, “I’m in love with your body,” in the chorus. It’s not like it’s a bad lyric or anything, but I was bummed to see that he was just spoon-feeding us.

This song was also on the vulgar side for Sheeran.  While he’s sung about his sex life and romance in the past, the lyrics to this one made me cringe a little – just a little. Sheeran originally wrote the song for Rihanna, which would explain a lot of why it didn’t sound like classic Ed Sheeran to me. I also think it’s a little weird how he sings the female dialogue in the song in a higher octave, but I got over it after a few replays. With that being said, I do suspect some kind of duet/remix could come into play in a few weeks. Don’t get me wrong; I don’t hate the song at all. In fact, it’s officially on my personal Spotify playlist, so it made the cut. However, for me, it sounded better the third or fourth time I heard it; it was not a one-listen hit.

“Castle on the Hill,” however, is a little bit of a different story. I heard that this song was supposed to be the so-called anthem for Sheeran’s album, but if that’s the case, I’d be pretty disappointed. This song wasn’t well received by everyone else as much as his other song. “Castle on the Hill” landed in the 13th spot on Spotify and fell short of “Shape of You” which landed first. While this song has more of an upbeat background that is a little more familiar with Sheeran’s previous releases, it lacked in originality. Everything else is still there – the classic guitar playing in the background, the high notes,  the storytelling in the lyrics, the passionate (and not to mention, sexy) push in is voice – but sadly, this song overall sounds like something I’ve already heard before. It sounds like a song that I would hear in a movie trailer about a family and their dog. It sounds like the soft-rock you would hear in the background of a “Grey’s Anatomy” episode.

While I would label these two songs as ‘alright,’ I feel like Ed Sheeran could have done better. Typically, artists release two of their best songs to hype up the album before it’s release. If these two were indeed his best, I wouldn’t be purchasing his next album. I might be listening to it on Spotify, but probably won’t be a purchaser. However, after being MIA for so long, I can understand why the singer would choose songs that would appeal more to the general public, rather than please musical reviewers such as myself. But that’s exactly where the problem is for me. I feel like this is the first step in becoming a sellout, and he was never like that before.

I hope that his upcoming album still captures his essence and the classic style of music he’s worked hard to establish, and I’ll look forward to its release. While these songs were two that I considered being pretty good/okay, it wasn’t necessarily great, which is what I was expecting of the talented singer. Both songs were catchy, enjoyable and fit today’s description for modern music. However, for lack of originality, I would give this music release a four-star rating out of five.