Play

The Ed Sheeran people remember from the early days, the one who got into drunken fights and wrote heartfelt love songs to make up for showing up late from the pub, would probably have turned Play into a drinking game. Every time he uses an explosion metaphor, you take a shot. If he brings up the stars, you finish your Guinness. If you are bold enough, you can add references to heaven into the mix, though I would not recommend it. Some quick back-of-the-napkin math suggests that by the 20-minute mark of Play, you would already be 13 shots deep.

Whatever you think of Sheeran, he has never come across this uninspired before. In the first decade of his career, he managed to use his “average guy” persona to hide a relentless drive for success, a quality he shared with his friend and collaborator Taylor Swift. He started with “The A Team,” an acoustic debut single about homelessness and drug addiction, and spun it into a series of albums filled with dependable wedding staples. Along the way, he leaned into flashy but practical genre experiments that produced high-stakes hits like “Shape of You,” “I Don’t Care,” and “Bad Habits.”

Sheeran’s most clever trick was realizing that his very everyday personal life gave him the freedom to take musical risks that would have been harder for other stars. He married his high school sweetheart, keeps close with his childhood friends, and has even joked about once soiling himself onstage. That kind of everyman image allowed him to dabble in grime, dancehall, and even release a song with Cardi B where she claimed that “Ed got a little jungle fever.” He never seemed like a jet-setting, trend-chasing multimillionaire. Instead, he was the relatable guy who could skim through Latin trap, hip-hop, and folk pop and somehow turn it all into hits.

By his own words, Sheeran no longer has that same fire. He told The New York Times, “Pop is a young person’s game and you have to really, really be in it and want it. I’ve found myself stepping back more and more and being like, actually, I’m really valuing family.” While this might seem like a quiet retreat from the pop machine, it undercuts the work of artists like Swift and Madonna, who have fought to prove that pop is not just for the young. And more importantly, it rings hollow when you listen to Play, which feels like a retreat after 2023’s and Autumn Variations, his first studio albums since 2011, not to top the Billboard 200.

For someone as fixated on stats as Sheeran, this fact must sting. Early in the Play, he even says he wants to “keep this Usain pace.” Yet you can also hear the exhaustion throughout the record, where he goes back to his two safest formulas, romantic wedding songs and “global” pop bangers, without much of the spark or warmth that made him such a draw in the first place. The result is a clash between lingering ambition and a lack of effort, leaving Sheeran sounding like the one thing he never wanted to be seen as: a calculating pop star driven more by the need to hold onto his status than by genuine love of music.

That shift was not inevitable. The first track, “Opening,” is actually one of the most interesting moments on the album. It starts with a soft acoustic intro before veering into some of Sheeran’s weakest attempts at rap: “In this world, there’s no relaxin’/I’ve been here since migraine skankin’/Never been cool, but never been a has-been.” His awkward rhymes and the sing-song delivery make it tough to listen to, but lyrically, it is revealing. He admits he may have “lost his way,” worries that his “career’s in a risky place,” and references fallings-out, though he never says exactly what they were. It sets up the possibility of an album where Sheeran might really reflect on his place in the music industry and in his own life.

That is not what Play turns out to be. Instead, when he circles back to those ideas, it is through heavy-handed sentiment. On the stomping sing-along “Old Phone,” he discovers a decade-old device full of texts and photos, including messages from exes and friends who have since passed away. His conclusion that maybe it is best left in the past feels obvious and flat. When he sings about the “overwhelming sadness” of friends he has lost, it comes across more like a diary entry than honest introspection. He doesn’t push deeper into what those feelings mean. For someone who doesn’t currently own a phone, Sheeran misses the irony that most people’s phones today are already crammed with both love and hate. By the bridge, he has tucked the phone away again, as if to wrap the idea neatly without exploring it further.

“Old Phone” at least tries something slightly new, but elsewhere Sheeran falls back on old patterns. On “Camera,” he revisits the reassuring-but-bland style of his One Direction co-write “Little Things,” reminding his partner she is beautiful despite insecurities. Then he flips the concept of his 2015 hit “Photograph,” singing, “I don’t need a camera to capture this moment/I’ll remember how you look tonight for all my life.” The effect is less touching and more like a tired echo of Eric Clapton’s “Wonderful Tonight.”

The box-checking continues with songs like “In Other Words,” which feels like a weaker version of “Perfect,” and “The Vow,” which recalls “Thinking Out Loud.” Then there is “A Little More,” a bitter breakup track where Sheeran sings, “I can’t call you crazy/’Cause you could be diagnosed.” It reminds listeners of two things: he struggles to show empathy toward exes in his writing, and his attempts at humor rarely land.

The bright spots come when Sheeran leans into sounds outside his usual palette. “Azizam,” which takes its name from an Iranian term meaning “my darling,” is the most vibrant song here, full of energy and rhythm, with producer Ilya weaving in traditional Iranian instruments. “Sapphire,” a collaboration with Punjabi star Arijit Singh, and “Symmetry,” which builds on a lively tabla rhythm from Jayesh Kathak, are heavy-handed but carried by Sheeran’s genuine enthusiasm. The excitement in his delivery recalls the risk-taking that once made songs like “South of the Border” so oddly compelling. With Shah Rukh Khan, India’s biggest film icon, appearing in the “Sapphire” video, these songs are positioned to make a real impact.

On these tracks, Sheeran finally sounds engaged. He has said he finished the album in Goa, and these moments feel alive enough that you wish he had built the whole project around them. Still, the timing feels strange. Just one day before the album’s release, more than 110,000 far-right protesters marched through London, railing against immigration. Against that backdrop, Sheeran’s lighthearted collaborations with Indian and Iranian musicians feel disconnected, like escapist gestures at a time when such apolitical optimism already feels outdated.

The record closes with “Heaven,” one of its better songs, but also one that highlights Sheeran’s ongoing issues. On one level, it nods to a recurring critique of his work: even though he won both of his copyright lawsuits in 2023 and 2024, many listeners still hear echoes of other songs in his writing, and “Heaven” sounds a lot like Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” or Charli XCX’s “Everything Is Romantic.” On another level, its mix of light percussion and straightforward lyrics strikes a balance between the adventurousness he claims he has outgrown and the clichés that drag down much of the album. But then, as if unable to help himself, he falls back on familiar imagery: “Chemicals bursting, exploding/As every second’s unfolding.” Which, if you are playing the drinking game, means another double shot.