“Visiting Hours” is about the death of his mentor and friend Michael Gudinski: “I wish that Heaven had visiting hours so I could just swing by and ask your advice,” he sings. His new songs are also unavoidably clichéd, reiterating the “live in the moment” and “everything works out in the end” sentiments without saying anything new about them.Īt his most emotional point, Sheeran still seems uninspired. Now you’ll hear “Bad Habits” or “Shivers” on the radio one too many times and maybe you’ll catch yourself humming along in spite of yourself - but Sheeran struggles to strike a chord beyond that.

While Sheeran was never particularly well-known for his inventiveness, his predictable and somewhat cheesy melodies worked during his singer-songwriter days of heartfelt ballads and intimate lyrics. It has become hard to deny that we are in a new era of Sheeran’s music, one marked by unoriginality so striking that you want to convince yourself that it is deliberate. 29 release of ‘=’ makes it clear that this was wishful thinking.

Long-time fans coping with their disappointment could have brushed it off as a mid-career crisis before he returns to his roots - but the Oct. 6 Collaboration Project,’ the underwhelming result was partially overshadowed by the long list of internationally-renowned artists he collaborated with, including Justin Bieber, Khalid and Bruno Mars. When Sheeran traded in his acoustic guitar to experiment with dancehall, R&B and some semblance of hip-hop in 2019 for his album ‘No. In fact, Sheeran’s fifth studio album peaks with its opening track, “Tides” - the soft-rock beat propels you forward as he fills you in about his life, until it deliberately reaches a literal halt to reflect the lyrics: “Time stops to still / When you are in my arms, it always will.” But it’s all downhill from there. The opening lines to Ed Sheeran’s freshly released album ‘=’ (pronounced ‘equals’) effectively encapsulate his new tracks - he has settled down, gotten his life together and “grown up.” Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly clear that his music has not followed the same trajectory as his life. Overall, 'Bad Habits' is a bad beginning to Ed Sheeran's upcoming album as he's probably the last person I'd expect to follow the bad habit of artists crafting songs so that they would go viral on Tik Tok, although in this case, the song is so bad that it might not even go viral.“I have grown up, I am a father now / Everything has changed but I am still the same somehow.” I never expected Ed Sheeran to fall into the trap of making a Tik Tok song and trying to start a dance trend, creating a mix of a club banger and his usual style, which both do not mix together at all, making 'I Don't Care' look a billion times better. Ed Sheeran has completely disappointed me with this song as I just wanted some classic Ed Sheeran, especially as he's already experimented an extreme amount on his last project, collaborating with plenty of people and switching styles song to song. The lyrics are not bad, being about how Ed Sheeran can't let go of his bad habits, such as drinking and taking drugs, leading him to get involved in relationships he shouldn't be involved in, especially when he's now got a daughter. The production is so generic, using Marshmallow type drums that sound very cheap along with a lazy instrumental that doesn't keep me interested for long. The vocals from Ed Sheeran are extremely exhausting to listen to, easily being some of his worst, sounding a little like an Adam Levine clone while using similar vocal effects to what The Weeknd used on After Hours, being an awful combination as it ruins the really good, soothing touch to Ed Sheeran's vocals. 'Bad Habits' is the lead single to Ed Sheeran's next project, being bad in all aspects as Ed Sheeran seems to want to capitalize on the amount of money artists are earning through Tik Tok.

Ed sheeran bad habits album