At the end of last month, Ed Sheeran returned with his first full-length album since 2019. Entitled =, it wound up continuing a streak of chart-topping releases, becoming his fifth consecutive album to go No. 1. He also stopped by Saturday Night Live to perform “Shivers” and “Overpass Graffiti.” Long story short, things have been going pretty well for Sheeran lately, but he feels like he’s not getting enough love from his fellow pop peers.
During a recent interview on The Breakfast Club, Sheeran opened up about his anxieties. “I’m not accepted by my genre,” he claimed. “I thought it was quite telling that my album came out and the only people that emailed me in-depth about liking it were like Dave and Stormzy and people from the UK rap and UK grime scene.” He added, “My peers largely, I feel, in the pop scene often don’t want me to succeed. … I’ve never felt accepted by my scene.”
This could be one of the reasons why Sheeran’s new album is an entirely solo effort. However, he and Taylor Swift do have a song they wrote together on the way. It will appear on Swift’s upcoming album Red (Taylor’s Version), which arrives on November 12.
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.