Ed Sheeran - "Autumn Variations"

This one surprised me

I am perplexed.

I don’t dislike Ed Sheeran, but his music has never blown me away, either. I’ve always liked him best when he features in somebody else’s track. Most of his singles I’ve ever heard are just palatable, at best.

Which is why Autumn Variations, Sheeran’s 7th full-length album,¹ is my first Sheeran LP.

And it is, largely, good. Which I didn’t truly expect. Autumn Variations is, largely, this light, airy Folk-Pop with a blend of electronic and acoustic elements. And a steep production value.

Opening track “Magical” is as strong as its title implies, with a patient and intentional vocal delivery paired with a simple-but-smart acoustic accompaniment. It’s a great tone-setter for the album with it’s low tempo and atmospheric tone. It also showcases good lyricism.

Much of the album follows with this same sort of wistful tone and polished productions. Many songs have solid hooks and strong melodies, but some are undermined by serious repetition and a lack of lyrical depth.

“Plastic Bag”, for example, is one of the most upbeat and boppy tracks on the record, and the chorus has a great vocal hook. But even one loop of the chorus is repetitive, as its six lines are only three unique lines which are repeated twice per refrain. Restraint is just as important as finding a strong hook, because if you lean too heavily on said hook, it just becomes grating. “Plastic Bag” is a great song which, frankly, isn’t enjoyable.

“Blue” is the other track that really doesn’t work for me on these same terms. It isn’t as egregious as “Plastic Bag”, but the melody is simplistic and Sheeran limits himself to about half an octave in falsetto for the majority of the song.

Thankfully, the album offers plenty of strong tracks in spite of its few weaknesses: “American Town” and “That’s On Me” offer more than enough energy to replace the frustration of “Plastic Bag”; “Page” and “When Will I Be Alright” also fall into the ‘acoustic track with falsetto vocals’ niche, but with stronger melodies.

However, I do also have to address the album as a whole. The only reason Autumn Variations ended up on my list at all was because of Sheeran’s thematic pitch: songs written about autumn and what autumn means. And of the 14 tracks here, only maybe two or three could be argued to really fit that theme. I’ve had to do more research, because it seems that the video I saw with Sheeran pitching the album was grossly oversimplified.²

What I found, ultimately, is that the theme is much more complex, as discussed in this Variety article:

“Last autumn, I found that my friends and I were going through so many life changes. After the heat of the summer, everything either calmed, settled, fell apart, came to a head or imploded,” said Sheeran in his statement.

“When I went through a difficult time at the start of last year, writing songs helped me understand my feelings and come to terms with what was going on,” he continued, “and when I learned about my friends’ different situations, I wrote songs, some from their perspectives, some from mine, to capture how they and I viewed the world at that time. There were highs of falling in love and new friendships among lows of heartbreak, depression, loneliness and confusion.

“My dad and brother told me about a composer called Elgar, who composed ‘Enigma Variations’, where each of the 14 compositions were about a different one of his friends. This is what inspired me to make this album.”

Of course, this makes the theme rather hard to vet, as a reviewer. All I can do is trust that this theme was followed, and admit that it’s honestly beautiful.

I do have to add, though — because I planned to include the worst track on the album here (“The Day I Was Born”) as part of this point. But with this additional information, it doesn’t matter that Sheeran’s birthday is in February. But the song gives off serious ‘woe is me’ vibes; in this updated context, it feels like lyrical injustice to Sheeran’s friend.

Overall, the album has several very strong songs and just a handful of weaknesses. It’s better than I expected — the eleven tracks I enjoyed here have more than doubled the selection of Sheeran songs in my library.

Rating: Green

1. And only the second to not be titled with a mathematical symbol.

2. Or I’m misremembering. But it’s more fun to assume I’m not.