Nothing Is Certain, Except...

Even when grieving, Ed Sheeran can’t help aiming for the middle.

- CRAIG JENKINS

— (SUBTRACT) ED SHEERAN. ASYLUM RECORDS/ ATLANTIC RECORDS.

IN FEBRUARY 2022, Ed Sheeran learned that his wife, Cherry Seaborn, had been diagnosed with cancer while pregnant with their second child and that his best friend, Jamal Edwards—a savvy West London music fan who had founded SBTV, an outlet for new artists that helped break Dave, Stormzy, and Sheeran—was dead at 31. The timing was crushing: Sheeran had just made a massive work commitment, having announced the Mathematics Tour, a year of stadium engagements around the world to celebrate his quadrilogy of arithmetic-themed studio albums—2011’s + (Plus), 2014’s x (Multiply), 2017’s ÷ (Divide), and 2021’s = (Equals)—through which the busker and loop-pedal geek had been transformed into a phenomenon. He had been rewarded royally for appending modern production flourishes to his recursive folk-pop formula, and for telegraphing the tastes of an international audience at each step of a decade-long search for the median sound; now, he could either take time to heal with his family or tough it out and hit the road.