Ed Sheeran Says His Next Album Is Already Finished

Ed Sheeran fans can rest assured of new music in the new year. The British singer told Variety that his next, yet-to-be-titled, album is already finished, and he’s “getting back into big pop.” He told the outlet that his last project, Subtract, “was obviously a completely different record that didn’t really call for big pop stuff.” But for his next effort, “it feels like I’m getting back into big pop for the first time in a long time,” he said, a move that was “quite exciting.”

Along with completing the music, Sheeran revealed that he’s already shot two music videos for the project and will film two more in the new year. The 33-year-old has been touring for the past two years, and will be doing shows in Asia before heading back to Europe next spring. 

News of a pending album comes months after Sheeran announced the end of his three-year trek for the +-=÷x (pronounced Mathematics) tour. The singer-songwriter first started the Mathematics tour in April of 2022 in Dublin and played his way through much of Europe, Australia, and New Zealand before hitting the U.S. from April through October of 2023. According to trade publication Pollstar, the Mathematics tour was the seventh-highest grossing tour of 2023, amassing over $268 million on 54 shows. Sheeran’s previous Divide tour was at one point the highest grossing concert tour of all time, but has since been eclipsed by tours from Taylor Swift, Elton John, and Coldplay. “It was time to Stop, but then we can press Play…” he said at the time of the announcement, hinting at new music to come.

Elsewhere in the Variety feature, Sheeran said that “Under The Tree,” a song he wrote for Netflix’s That Christmas, is the realization of a longtime vision to inject the Christmas carol canon with some true-to-life melancholy. He said the song is “the one thing I’ve wanted to write,” adding that, “I’d never seen the need [to write] a sad Christmas song until writing this one…this is quite a lot of people’s realities at Christmas.”