Ed Sheeran has written the soundtrack for my life since I was 14 years old. Besides One Direction, Sheeran was the only musician I cared about as a teen. I could often be found gushing over the ginger singer, even telling people that I would listen to him sing about his grocery list.
Even as I made it into my late teens and outgrew One Direction, I still had a place in my heart for Sheeran — a huge place. Just a year ago, I paid some big bucks to see him in concert. I am divulging all of this information to preface the painful thing I am about to say: Ed Sheeran’s new album is bad.
For the uninitiated, Sheeran released an EP in 2011 entitled No. 5 Collaborations Project. This was his fifth EP, and he decided to collaborate with other artists similar in fame to him at the time (read: completely unknown, especially to an American audience). The EP is not one of his most famous works, however, extremely dedicated fans of Sheeran love it, and Sheeran often stated his love for making it, leading him to come up with the concept of his new album: No. 6 Collaborations Project. He did the same thing; he collaborated with artists that were similar in fame to him (read: wildly famous and rich).
I was so excited when I heard the news, especially since I loved No. 5 so much, and as songs started being released on the radio I got even more excited. First, he released ‘I Don’t Care,’ featuring Justin Bieber. I have never been a fan of Bieber, but the song was extremely catchy and all about being antisocial, so I thought it was great. Then, ‘Beautiful People’ was released featuring Khalid, an artist I like, and the song met all of my expectations. Khalid’s and Sheeran’s voices just make sense together, and the message behind the song, the idea that just because someone isn’t considered to have traditional Hollywood beauty and grace, doesn’t mean they can’t live a beautiful life surrounded by love and happiness.
So when the album dropped, I was ready to be blown away. My expectations were high, maybe a little too high. I am sad to say, I was extremely disappointed by the rest of the album. Some of the songs were just okay, others were horrendous. You’d think Sheeran and a star-studded cast of features would create some exquisite pop music, but a lot of the songs seemed poorly planned, written and executed.
The song that stood out as being the absolute worst song in the album was ‘South of the Border,’ featuring Cardi B and Camila Cabello, two Latina superstars. The song relies on the extended sexual innuendo of going “south of the border,” which is already enough to make someone cringe, but to make matters worse, Sheeran tries his hand at speaking Spanish. To be fair, Sheeran has tried his hand at speaking Spanish before in his song ‘Barcelona,’ but I gave that one a pass because it seemed more like a sweet gesture of him trying to learn the language while visiting a new country, but in ‘South of the Border,’ Sheeran very creepily says “te amo, mami,” in the most British way imaginable, and I get a little nauseous every time I think about it.
Another song that struck me immediately as bad was ‘Take Me Back to London,’ featuring Stormzy, a British rapper who is probably the least famous artist on the album. This seemed to pay a bit of homage to No. 5 collaborations, but it felt completely inauthentic. Sheeran seemed like he was trying to seem like a hardened rapper and it fell pretty flat. In a lot of his old work, he did a lot of rapping and I always enjoyed it, but that was because you could hear his unique spin on the genre that worked with the type of music he was good at, but this seems like such a divergence of who he is, and not in a good way.
To me, No. 6 Collaborations Project fell flat of what Sheeran’s fans were expecting. It seems he spent more time trying to fit in as many collaborations with as many big name artists as possible that he forgot what should be, and what has always been, at the heart of his music and that is his impeccable ability to show the world his full authentic self through his music, without giving a care in the world what people think of him as long as he was making art he was passionate about. No. 6 Collaborations Project does not seem like an authentic piece of Sheeran’s art, but a gimmicky album meant to revive his popularity after the hype of his last album wore off.
Photo courtesy of edsheeran.com
