Education in the UK is fucked. This may not seem relevant to Ed Sheeran (though the word 'fucking' is always used whenever I discuss the man) but let me explain.
My secondary school life was fascinating, however I don't talk about it as much as I probably should do because bear in mind I also think the Cambodian Genocide was fascinating. My school went through a complete change in the five years I studied there; from something out of a Roald Dahl tale to just a mess.
As a senior prefect, I was part of a select panel of 'model' students routinely rolled out during corporate/political events that achieved absolutely nothing to fix the schools problems. These problems being: 1) There was a shortage of teachers. 2) It was luck whether your teacher was good or not. 3) It was luck whether your teacher would leave mid-year of not. 4) Toxic masculinity was permitted to grow which resulted in a prison-like environment. 5) Little to no sex education. 6) Zero lessons on diversity. 7) Lack of focus on student welfare, resulting in me not being diagnosed with a restrictive mental disability until I was 18.
From what I can tell (my father is a teacher, though thankfully not at the same school), that mess is still the status quo. It's now graduated to a point where music might be taken off the curriculum. There are fair arguments that music is a healthy, recreational subject that has merit in being taken seriously in addition to bolstering academic performance in other areas. I, however, am more worried that the next generation of musicians will sound like Ed Sheeran's Divide.
I admire how music is becoming a 'self-taught' medium, as artists use computers to synthesise instruments - meaning you don't have to be part of the London Philharmonic to replicate a symphonic soundscape. Pop music has graduated from Phil Spector's 'wall of sound' to 'fist of every instrument in the world being punched down your earhole.'
But that's the problem. Self-teaching means a narrower pool of resources to learn from. People who make pop music are only learning from other pop artists rather than branching out into older works. ('Black Beatles' sounds like and is nothing to do with The Beatles.) Notice how every Electronic Dance song sounds exactly the same? That's because these hacks with MacBooks think that only an exact formula with a limited selection of chords and sounds is music. It's the same with other variants of pop music. Ed Sheeran seems only influenced by John Mayer and (*thunderclap*) Bryan Adams. Bland, white men playing with acoustic guitars. The same chords. The same subjects.
I've talked about Ed already. In that review of his second-worst song, 'Thinking Out Loud,' I joked that Sheeran hit a wall with his last album being named 'Multiply.' He'd ran out of mathematical functions that denote quality. I forgot that Sheeran comes across as so dense (this is the person who thinks Shrek is a sincere fairy-tale) he wouldn't see the irony of naming his third album after a function with negative connotations. Since when has division been associated with anything of higher quality? (Aside from Joy Division.)
I'm certain I'm the wrong person to review this. I've hated Ed Sheeran since before The A Team (his worst song) was a hit. There's something wrong with you if you think a song that romanticises a young woman who's addicted to class A drugs to the point she's close to death is pleasurable to listen to. Nothing turns Ed Sheeran on more than a woman who's forced to become a prostitute, and it's implied she's homeless in the middle of winter. She needs help, not a serenade.
Sheeran's complete lack of understanding a serious and prevalent problem the bottom of society experiences shows the sort of audience he wishes to insert himself into; people who have absolutely no problems. Which is a shame, because his best song - 'Don't' - is all about betrayal and resentment towards both a real life person and himself. Sheeran is by no means untalented, nor is he immature as either an artist or a person. He's just a complete idiot.
He ludicrously attempted to combine rap and acoustic in his first album, and through this he projected all the pomp and raw power of Vanilla Ice. The focus away from instrumental composition to Sheeran vocalist always just embarrasses him. Even when he sticks to his very limited range, he stands alone crooning the most adolescent of musical poetry like the most painfully average school talent act ever. 'Don't,' and to an extent 'Sing,' worked because you couldn't tell it was an Ed Sheeran song.
'Divide,' meanwhile, is unmistakably an Ed Sheeran album because it opens with a horrible rap. You're a white ginger kid who hangs out with Taylor Swift, Ed. Eminem got away with it because he grew up with genuine hardship, and when he finally broke into the music industry he created a unique alter-ego that intentionally represented everything tasteless in the world. Slim Shady said he'll rot your brain and everyone believed it.
'Eraser' is perhaps the worst song. Sheeran nasally, clunkily pontificates about how "money is the root of all evil" and how he regrets his fame on the opening track of an album that has made him obscenely rich. Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but Ed Sheeran hasn't been arrested. He hasn't been to rehab. He hasn't been at the forefront of any scandal to date. The worst thing that has happened to him was a member of One Direction cheating on his girlfriend. Everything else has been an unbroken string of fame, romantic attachments, and shitloads upon shitloads of money. I meanwhile am £40,000 in debt, single, and living with my dysfunctional parents in the middle of buttfuck nowhere with absolutely no future ahead of me.
Yeah, go fuck yourself Ed.
The next song is supposedly the 'big hit' of the album. 'Castle On The Hill' is a song that opens with the killer line "When I was six years old I broke my leg." It continues with the same bland spiel every singer eventually writes about how they wish they were young and attractive again. You can tell this was supposed to be the big hit because it's by far the most polished song with a rich wall of utterly bland musicianship behind utterly bland lyrics. This manages to be the least awful song because it produces nothing of particular offence. Except for this line:
"[I was] running from the law through the backfields."
Haha no you didn't. Even if you were secretly a rebel, you wouldn't be in a situation where you'd be running from the police unless you'd stolen something or murdered someone. Neither of these are very romantic. "Ah, I remember when I shoplifted a bottle of WKD from Tesco Metro and ran from the wheezy security guard when the alarm went off. Oh to be young, wild, and free again!" Plus, if you were running through backfields then you would've eventually been caught. The police would only be hunting you down that far away from civilisation if you'd done something prison-worthy - which we know you've never done...unless you count 'The A Team.'
From here on the album sets into a self-satisfied fuzz. Sheeran gets his croon-face on and starts saying how much he loves you. Yes, you; random, unspecific stranger with a disposable income. 'Dive' pushes Sheeran's vocal range so a heartfelt apology becomes an off-key yelp - a plea for someone else to take over. 'Perfect' is only perfect if you want to spend three minutes learning how to block sound out. 'Supermarket Flowers' has all the quality and thoughtfulness of said gift. 'Bibia Be Ye Ye' plays like a rejected Disney Channel song, though I'm grateful for the line "threw up on his car seat" because vomit is perhaps the best image to associate the song with. Only Ed Sheeran could lift from another language and sound even more white in the process.
The only other track of note is 'Shape Of You,' the other 'big hit.' The opening notes are identical to Sia's 'Cheap Thrills' and the song is a by-the-numbers pop song about falling in love in a bar. Not a club; a bar. The place where people who're too lame to visit a club go. Amazingly, this still attempts to be a party song even though it's impossible to play at a party thanks to Sheeran's empty-headed presence and, again, him not possessing the range to carry a party song. It's a song about him being in love with your body. Not you - your body. Even the way he describes his love is lame.
He requests to "put 'Van The Man' on the jukebox," which is ludicrous since 1) What kind of bar has a jukebox these days? 2) Of all the things to play, you choose Van Morrison? The slurring soul artist who's only good song is 'Brown Eyed Girl' from 1967? Are you referring to that crusty, unromantic old song, or his shitty, slow music from later years? Do you even know who Van Morrison is? 3) Yes, put Van Morrison on so we don't have to listen to Ed Sheeran. I beg you.
Like 'Castle On The Hill,' this is tolerable because it's white noise. The only place where this song will be played is where no-ones actually paying attention to it. For example: at my work, where some colleague (who I will find and kill) decided to play this entire album from five o'clock in the morning to seven o'clock on our tinny sound system. This in no way has affected my review, and has in no way harboured a negative bias born from the suppressed rage I felt for two hours straight.
And this album is one of the highest selling in recent UK chart history. Because you fuckers all voted for Brexit. You're all stupid. You know you're stupid, and now we're all paying the price for your stupidity. Ed Sheeran is the sound of 2017. God help the future of music, and the future of England.
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