Ed Sheeran is breathing a sigh of relief after a jury found last week that he did not steal key components of Marvin Gaye’s classic 1973 tune “Let’s Get It On” to create his own Grammy-winning song “Thinking Out Loud” in 2014.
Sheeran joined WTOP’s sister station, The Mix in Chicago, to celebrate with Chris Petlak and Nikki Chuminatto.
“I’m so wiped from all of that,” Sheeran told The Mix. “It’s mad. The outside world is the outside world and my career is releasing albums and doing shows, but when you’re in that courtroom, that is all that you can see and all that matters, so to be out of it now, it feels like such a massive weight has been lifted.”
The verdict is coincidentally timed with his new documentary “Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All” on Disney+.
“This director came to me and said, ‘I don’t want to make a music documentary, I want to make a documentary on you as a person,” Sheeran said. “My record label is so happy about all of the press around this. None of this was planned. We moved the album so it was near the Disney documentary, then suddenly the court case was happening. I thought it would end last week but it dragged on, so it feels like a movie like it’s all falling into place.”
As if that wasn’t serendipitous enough, his fifth studio album “-“ (“Subtract”) just arrived on May 5, continuing his series of math-symbol titles after “+” (2011), “x” (2014), “÷” (2017), “=” (2021) and now “-” (2023).
“Songwriting is kind of like working out,” Sheeran said. “You work out and exercise and it keeps your body fit and healthy, and I find that with songwriting, some of it is just an exercise sometimes and every now and then a good song will come out of that, but I’m constantly writing to keep the wheel turning because I never want to get writer’s block and just stop. I want to just continually be writing, and sometimes that means writing bad songs.”
He says that there’s always stuff to write about because life is “colorful” as a father of two kids.
“I treat it like a 9 to 5,” Sheeran said. “I got it from Eminem when I worked with him in Detroit. He’s very regimented. He goes to work and comes home and that’s his family life. For musicians, our livelihoods are so all over the shop. You finish a gig at 11, then you start a gig at 8, then you might do a promo at 5, but that’s a weird day, so now that I have kids, actually being structured so I have a regular work schedule is good.”
His new tour hits FedEx Field in Landover, Maryland on June 24.
“There’s more bells and whistles, fireworks and flames, it’s a very good tour, I’m really proud of it,” Sheeran said. “The first time I played an arena was 2011, then the first time I played a stadium was 2015, so once you’ve done those, it becomes normal. … Stadiums are an all-inclusive event that people are coming to with their families or friends or large groups, so you have to make it a big communal singalong and play the songs that people know.”
