“I actually ended up doing 90% of the album in my garden.”

That’s where Ed Sheeran told Devo Brown he recorded most his new project, Divide, last year.

Ed spoke to Devo on the day of the release of his new songs ‘Castle on the Hill’ and ‘Shape of You’!

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9 Minutes and 25 Seconds with Ed Sheeran

Originally Aired: January 6, 2017

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After a week of teasing fans with clues on social media, Ed ended his self-imposed year-long hiatus, surprising fans with not one, but two tracks!

https://twitter.com/edsheeran/status/817236159512383489

Ed explained to Devo the reason for releasing two songs, “people do do it, like Drake dropped two tracks, he dropped ‘One Dance’ and the one with The Throne (Pop Style), I think the fact is I wanted to drop two actual singles, that are going to have actual videos, and both need to be played on radio within the same ten minutes of each other, like they come as a package. I wanted to show the two, or three, four, five different types, or sides of the album.” 

Even though he took a break in 2016 to travel and see the world, Ed remained very busy behind the scenes, “Ya I was travelling, I was making albums, I had a couple of hits with other people.”

One of those hits was Justin Bieber’s ‘Love Yourself’, which Ed co-wrote, and it’s nominated for ‘Song of the Year’ at the GRAMMYs. If ‘Love Yourself’ were to win the GRAMMY this year, Ed would be the first person ever to win in that category in back to back years…he won last year for his hit single, ‘Thinking Out Loud’.

Rumours have been swirling that Ed will be performing on music’s biggest night in February…so, will he be? Devo asked Ed about those GRAMMYs rumours, “I don’t think I’m playing it, but I will be going in a suit to sit down and wait to see if I’ve won, I don’t think I’m playing it though.”

While winning a GRAMMY would mean a lot to him, Ed gains real satisfaction from performing live and watching people sing his lyrics back to him.

The two then got to talking about Ed’s new single, ‘Castle on the Hill’. The ‘castle’ (also known as Ed’s cottage) has quite the history in Suffolk as it’s been around since 10 A.D. according to Ed.

The music video, which he shot in Suffolk, will feature people that he knows from his hometown, “They did actually cast people in the video that I knew, and we casted kids from the high school who were 15,16 in the video, so all the kids live in the town and went to the same high school I went to.”

The song holds a special meaning for Ed, “this is a love song dedicated to my hometown and my hometown friends, we have zero in common apart from our love for each other and our love for our hometown so I wrote a song about me growing up.”

They then moved on to talk about ‘Shape of You’, which many agree shows a different side to Ed that we aren’t used to hearing, “That’s why I released two [singles] is to kind of show the two, three, four, five different sides of the album, I didn’t want people listening to ‘Shape Of You’ and be like ‘that’s what the album is going to sound like’ or listening to ‘Castle on the Hill’ and be like, ‘that’s what the album is going to sound like’.”

For this project, don’t expect many (if any) collaborations with other artists as Ed isn’t a fan of that, “I’m not big on having collaborations on my own project, but I got an un-credited guitar solo from John Mayer which is quite cool.”

Fans can look forward to Ed’s new album Divide coming in 2017, and while he wouldn’t confirm a release date, he did say, “it will be soon.”

Yaaaas 2017!

Filed under: Ed Sheeran