Ed Gets Emotional

“-” demonstrates the breadth of Sheeran’s lyricism and restraints of pop music

The album tetralogy is finally complete! 

Ed Sheeran released “-” last Friday, closing out his series of albums, “X,” “➗” and “+” –never again will he subject us to the anxiety of high school algebra. 

Sheeran looked for creative inspiration from within on “-.” The album is distinct from the other three mathematics albums, as he begins to explore a more original sound and separate this album from his other smash hits.  

The album is certainly a marathon of a listen. Monotonously slow tempos make it painfully time-consuming, lacking in variety and pace. But excitement isn’t necessarily the intention of this album.

Instead, “-” steers in the opposite direction from Sheeran’s usual upbeat, radio-hit songwriting. His latest album uncovers an honest, emotional glimpse into his personal life and gives listeners access to more insight and depth. 

Songs like “Toughest” highlight the struggles that Sheeran endured over the past few years, including his wife’s cancer diagnosis as she was pregnant with their first child. “Eyes Closed,” the album’s lead single, was dedicated to his late friend Jamal Edwards, who died in 2022 while Sheeran had been working on the album. 

In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, Sheeran shared that “-” reflects his coping with struggles of “fear, depression and anxiety” from recent personal and public events in his life. These emotions are audible in the album’s storybook of heart-wrenching lyrics, touching on mental health in “Boat” and grief in “Life Goes On.” 

Sheeran’s lyricism is unbridled with its emotions. Pulling on the heartstrings of empathy and connection, the singer allows listeners to connect with his pain. In “Salt Walter,” Sheeran writes “I am filled up with regret/With things I did or never said, just leave that, well, alone,” a brutally honest lyric that conveys the inner turmoil of regret and pain. 

But the somewhat homogenous mood transfers over to the sound of “-” as the tempo feels unvarying throughout the 14-song album. Four bonus tracks, “Wildflowers,” “Stoned,” “Toughest” and “Moving,” also lack rhythmic variety from other tracks on the album.

The melodies and arrangements on bonus track “Wildflowers” honestly sounded like they could have been thrown together by a high school Soundcloud artist experimenting with a beat machine for the first time. 

But I digress–the musical composition of this track is certainly simple, but it works. Without the frivolous, cliché backing beats so often heard through our stereos and speakers on radio-ready pop songs, “-” is real. 

Sheeran’s inspiration and familiarity with the folk genre is most apparent in “The Hills of Aberfeldy.” Still slow but offering a lighter chord progression and a more acoustic sound than the rest of the album, the track is  reminiscent of previous hits “Galway Girl” and “Nancy Mulligan” from Sheeran’s sophomore album “X.” 

The musical composition of the album alone is nothing groundbreaking, but Sheeran’s lyrics are wistful and moving. Sheeran closed out his mathematics album series with “-,” but foreshadows a new direction in his career that adds even more complex, emotional songwriting.