Ed Sheeran = Available now
Rating: 
Billy Bragg
The Million Things That Never Happened
Now available, tour until November 27
Rating: 
Paul Simon said that every generation throws a hero onto the pop charts. He may have also said that every generation has a clever salesman. For millennials, it’s Ed Sheeran.
Bad Habits was No. 1 for months. This brought back flashbacks to 1991’s summer, when Bryan Adams sat there 16 weeks. Bad Habits was eventually toppled after 11 weeks – but only by Sheeran’s next single, Shivers.
His new album is out now. =. Never has a pop superstar drawn so much inspiration out of his pocket calculator. After +, x and ÷, only – remains. Ed, it’s yours!
Paul Simon said that every generation throws a hero onto the pop charts. He may have also said that every generation has a clever salesman. For millennials, it’s Ed Sheeran (above)
This cuddly, cuddly, and calculating genius has been with us for ten year. He has become a father since the release of his last album and turned thirty. ‘Everything has changed,’ he sings, ‘but I am still the same somehow.’
This line is typical: friendly, chatty, and stubbornly unoriginal. It’s the sentiment of ‘plus ça change’ without the sparkle.
The music is also very typical. The two smash hits are joined by 12 more songs – all highly commercial, and nearly all mediocre.
Two tracks are quite good, and both are love letters to Sheeran’s wife Cherry. His voice is soft and intimate on First Times and The Joker and The Queen.
Sheeran, a man so determined to be big is at his best when she stays small.
One track is truly terrible. Sandman, inspired by his daughter Lyra, is this album’s Galway Girl. There’s nothing wrong with being a doting dad – as long as it doesn’t lead you to put together a flat-pack lullaby, all tinkly marimbas and tin-eared earnestness.
‘Loving you is easy,’ he sings. ‘Life will not always be.’
The credits are very informative. Sheeran performs as a one-man band but in the studio he manages an army. Six engineers, five programmers as well as five keyboard players and five programmers were required to produce this track.
And yet, when he opened his mouth and sang ‘I need to change my perspective and prioritise’, there was nobody to point out that those words are just not music.
The influences are also telling. A few tracks mimic the scudding synths of The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights, Britain’s biggest song of 2020. One is written with Sam Roman, co-author of Lewis Capaldi’s Someone You Loved, Britain’s biggest song of 2019.
Sheeran’s mind is like an algorithm. She studies our tastes and wants to give us more of the things we love. It works – but it doesn’t make for great music.
Anyone who feels tempted to purchase = would do well to search out Billy Bragg’s new album, which, he says, is ‘about empathy – the real currency of music.’
Anyone tempted to buy = would do better to seek out Billy Bragg’s (above) new album, which, he says, is ‘about empathy – the real currency of music.’
He doesn’t care about politics, preferring to strike a chord instead of bang a drum and waxing lyrical on everything, from the pandemic to the internet (‘heroin to autodidacts’).
The accompanying live show is simple and straightforward. It consists of guitar, keyboards, jokes, and guitar. The new songs are easy to integrate with the old favorites, such as Sexuality and Tank Park Salute.
Bragg exudes warmth and a flicker of the firebrand she once was. ‘The revolution,’ he says, ‘is only a booster jab away.’