Ed Sheeran shares his wife, Cherry Seaborn, had a tumor while pregnant

Ed Sheeran will soon be releasing his most personal project to date.

The ‘Perfect’ singer announced that his fifth studio album bears the title – (pronounced Subtract), will be released on May 5, according to a press release. The project comes at a time of monumental changes in the musician’s life, including the birth of his second daughter with wife Cherry Seaborn last May.

“I was working on it Subtract I’ve spent a decade trying to shape the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I think it should be like,” Sheeran wrote in a statement. “Then in early 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art.”

This period included personal struggles that Sheeran previously shared on Instagram, but no further detail so far. These events include his legal victory over a copyright infringement proceeding in reference to his 2017 hit single “Shape of You,” in which he mourns the loss of a friend Jamal Edwards– who died last February aged 31 – and a medical scare in his family.

The Road to Baby by Ed Sheeran and Cherry Seaborn

“Within a month my pregnant wife was told she had a tumor and there was no route to treatment until after the birth,” recalled Sheeran, whose baby girl joined her two-year-old daughter Lyra Antarctic Seaborn Sheeran.

“My best friend Jamal, a brother of mine, died suddenly,” he continued, “and I stood in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was drowning in a spiral of anxiety, depression and fear, digging my head below the surface, looking up but not being able to catch my breath.”

Noting that the songwriting is his “therapy” and helping him “understand my feelings,” Sheeran said he rewrote his upcoming album to reflect his experiences.

“I wrote without thinking about what the songs were going to be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out,” he explained. “And in just over a week, I replaced a decade’s work with my deepest darkest thoughts.”

The story goes on

As a result, this album will be unlike any other project released in the past.

“As an artist, I didn’t feel like I could credibly create a work that doesn’t accurately represent where I stand and how I need to express myself at this point in my life,” the 32-year-old stated. “This album is exactly that. It opens the trapdoor into my soul. For the first time I’m not trying to make an album that people will like. I’m just releasing something that is honest and true to where I am in my adult life.”

Concluding that the album “is the journal entry from last February and my way of making sense of it,” Sheeran added, “That’s it Subtract.”

It will be the last part of his mathematical album era, which started with the debut album in 2011 + (Plus). It has since expanded X (Multiply), ÷ (Split) And = (Same). The tracklist for the project – produced by The National‘S Aaron Dessner– contains the songs “Boat”, “Salt Water”, “Eyes Closed”, “Life Goes On”, “Dusty”, “End Of Youth”, “Colourblind”, “Curtains”, “Borderline”, “Spark”, “Vega,” “Sycamore,” “No Strings,” and “The Hills of Aberfeldy.”

-, (Subtract) will be available to stream on May 5th.

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