Ed Sheeran Butting Heads With Label Over Next Album
Ed Sheeran admitted that he’s been fighting with his label lately because he wants to experiment with a new sound. The label is resisting change.
By WKBW on February 13, 2018
Ed Sheeran admitted that he’s been fighting with his label lately. He said that he wants to experiment with new sounds, but his label isn’t supportive.
Ed has secured his spot by now as a pop superstar. He not only finds incredible success as a solo artist, but he writes monster hits for others, too. However, Ed wants to break away from the sound he’s become known for, reports Music-news.com. He said on George Ezra’s podcast:
“I feel like it’s dangerous to have a career that goes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and everything’s happening, because at some point it’s gonna drop.
“The next record that I’m making is not a pop album. The reason it’s not a pop album is people expect you to come [up with more pop tunes] and the next album they’re going to be like, ‘It has to be bigger than ‘Shape of You’ and it has to sell more than this’, but if I control it and go, ‘Here’s a lo-fi record that I really f**king love,’ my fans are gonna be like ‘Yay!’, and the pop world is gonna be like, ‘Oh well, maybe the next one.’
“If the next album does, like, two or one [million], or 500,000 [sales units], it’s not a failure because I’ve made an album where I’m not trying to get there, so it’s not a failure. No one’s going to be like, ‘That’s a flop’. They’re going to be like, ‘That’s what he wants to do.'”
As expected, Atlantic Records is not crazy about this idea. The big heads at the label want Ed to continue creating monetarily successful music. Ed continued:
“The label hate that. The label really f**king hate that. They want a big pop album again but I think that s**t’s dangerous.”
To give an idea of what kind of content fans could expect if Ed creates a more experimental album, he references Coldplay’s Ghost Stories:
“My whole career I’ve studied Coldplay, and Coldplay are f**king geniuses. They did it with Ghost Stories. Ghost Stories was their artistic moment.”