In middle school I stumbled upon a music video entitled “Drunk” that featured a cat and a Ginger man. The music, lyrics, and voice were able to pull me in instantly.I kept going through YouTube’s suggested videos because I thought “No person can continuously make songs that are that good.”
Fast forward a few years where I’m a college freshman and the Ginger man, Ed Sheeran is still proving me wrong with his new album, Divide.
He dropped a few songs such as “Shape Of You,” “Castle On The Hill,” and “How Would You Feel” to hype up fans for his next mathematical related album. His 16 song tracklist album was released on March 2, and each track features it’s own backbone and uniqueness.
If only loving math could be as easy.
My favorite love songs off of the album is “Dive” and “Perfect”.
“Dive” is about loving with everything that you have. To love fiercely and with every fiber of your body. It’s a song in which the person he wants to love seems to be leading him on and he doesn’t know whether to fall or fly away from the situation. So he waits. He’s waiting to see what will happen because he knows that if he’s going to love the person he’s going to dive into the relationship and be fully committed. “So let me know the truth / Before I dive right into you” Once he dives in there are no restraints to the amount of love he is going to give.
“Perfect” makes me want to fall in love and find that person that I can absolutely adore. It makes me crave to have a long-term relationship with someone in which you just admire their every movement. My absolute favorite lyric from the song is “When you said you looked a mess, I whispered underneath my breath / But you heard it, darling, you look perfect tonight.” It showed that even though he wasn’t expecting her to hear his response, she still did and he sincerely meant it.
“Happier” is one of his sadder songs that is about seeing the person you love being happier with someone else. There have been many songs, such as “Jealous” by Labrinth or “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn, that discuss this topic but for some reason- maybe it was the rawness of his voice or the melody- but this one in particular made the tears swell up in my eye not even by the first minute.
“Galway Girl” is such a fun song to lip sync to in your underwear while dancing around in your room. It has a folk-country attitude that can’t help but bring my body to move along to the words.
“New Man” is another fun song that’s the epitome of the “Your Man-Crush Monday does [fill in the blank]” meme.
All of the songs on the album are independently important and tell a story that nearly anyone would be able to relate to. His vocals in each song are held with such passion that is captivating like a moth to a flame. There are a few songs that didn’t draw me in however, such as “Eraser.” It wasn’t to my liking as it was drastically different to past songs and I wasn’t a fan of his rapping, except the lyrics were still on point. The album, which fans waited over a year for, was still absolutely worth the wait and hype. He is able to orchestrate his tunes to the exact measure needed to resonate within a listener which requires incredible talent that he posses. Ed presents himself in a unique way and this album is going to Divide and conquer the charts for sure.