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Ed Sheeran has unveiled his two comeback singles ‘Castle On The Hill’ and ‘Shape Of You’ taken from his forthmcoming album called ÷ (Divide). Listen to them on Gigwise below.
The tracks are the multi-award winning singer/songwriter's first releases since 2015.
In December 2015, the singer announced he'd be taking a break from music so he could "travel the world and see everything I missed."
‘Castle On The Hill’ is a nostalgic cut and the lyrics seem to hark back to Sheeran’s teenage years in the “boring fields” of East Anglia. He talks of being "15 years old smoking hand rolled cigarettes”, “drinking cheap spirits drinking them straight", "running form the law through the back fields”, and “having his first kiss on Friday night.”
The song skips forward to a curious indicator that he's not a kid anymore: “Me and my friends have not thrown up for so long oh how we’ve grown.”
Sheeran yearns for his time as a school kid socialising with his closest friends and there’s plenty of strong imagery to transport you to where his head at as he reflects on the different paths everyone’s gone down in life.
These words are sung over a delay-laden guitar similar to The Edge and a simple four-on-the-floor bass drum, and clean bass line. Youtube commenters are mostly swooning over it revealing how much this song is bringing them to tears.
Meanwhile, ‘Shape Of You’ is more of a sweaty tropical dancefloor hit, an R&B lust song all about being “in love your body.” His flair for writing global number one hits seems well intact.
Although both cuts have only been online since the early hours of this morning, fans are celebrating arriving at the song before it hits a million, it’s not surprising he racks up so much knowing he’s had 3.4 billion streams to date.
But going out of the limelight for a year has severely increased fans thirst for new music and arriving back with two singles, especially one’s with quite a varied sound, will be a pleasant surprise to fans.
Speaking about his monumental comeback, 25-year-old Sheeran commented: “Hello 2017! I’ve been working hard on the new material and I hope you can be as excited about it as I am. I really wanted to show two different sides to my music that I’m equally as passionate about and I just knew I wanted to roll with two songs at the same time. I’m absolutely buzzing to be back.”
The releases come after a series of teases on social media. On 13 December Sheeran posted a blue square on Twitter breaking a year long silence. Since then he’s teased lyrics for his new music but today is the first time we’ve heard anything new at all.
In terms of live dates nothing has been announced yet but according to the efestivals site he is strongly rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury,
See fans celebrating his comeback on social media below.
Ed sheeran could release an album of him yelling at a wall and i would still love it
— peter spiniello (@PeterSpiniello) January 6, 2017
i can't believe ed sheeran saved 2017
— Joanna Simon (@joannasiimon) January 6, 2017
Ed Sheeran: Hasn't changed bc of fame, can sing, play an instrument, writes his own music, breaks twitter with 2 songs; king#WelcomeBackEd
— Jasmine (@sacredzjm) January 6, 2017
I think we can all agree that the real reason 2016 was such a disaster is because @edsheeran didn't release any new music 🤔
— Danielle Peazer (@DaniellePeazer) January 6, 2017
