“Equals”: Ed Sheeran beats his own record with a new album

With new electronic sounds and songs about love and parenthood, the British pop star hits the top. “Bad Habits” and “Shivers” are on the 5th and 7th rank in the Billboard Hot 100.

Ed Sheeran, Yorkshire’s native pop star, came back on the 29th of October with a new album: “=” (equals). Part of a series of four albums named after mathematical symbols: “+” (plus) was the first released in 2011, “x” (multiply) in 2014 and “÷” (divide) in 2017. A scheme of albums launched every 3 years, broken last year with his daughter’s birth. Ed Sheeran’s come back over the summer with his now-famous single “Bad Habits” quickly became viral after its launching in June (already counting more than 1,5 billion people listening on streaming platforms).

= (equals) is out now. This is my favourite album I’ve made, I’m so proud of it. Thank you to all the wonderful people who worked on it with me. To the fans, I hope you love it as much I do, it’s been a long journey to this point. Have a fantastic weekend xx pic.twitter.com/s8mQ1pLKYj

— Ed Sheeran HQ (@edsheeran) October 29, 2021

139,000 chart sales

This week, “Bad Habits” (5th) and “Shivers” (7th) are still on the Billboard Hot 100’s. This fifth album, which comes after four solos and one with collaborations in 2019 (with amongst others Justin Bieber and Khalid), is another successful release for the British author, composer, and performer. And the proof is here. For its opening week, "Equals" goes straight to the Official Albums Chart’s first place, with 139,000 chart sales. It is going beyond all the rest of this week’s Top 30 mixed.

Ed Sheeran is undeniably one of the greatest pop stars, with his female British counterpart, Adèle. Equals is Ed’s fifth album to beat the record and reach the top of the chart. And the singer even beat his own record by being the author of the best opening week for an album this year in the UK, that he first achieved with “Divide” in 2017. The first chart sales are 68% of physical sales (counting 11,600 vinyl’s copies), 18% of streaming and 14% of downloading.

Pursuing his way in a pop-folk and hip-hop style, the 30 year old man wanted to keep up with the times and trends, by adding a bit of electronic music sounds. A little contrast with his first singles, centred a lot around acoustic tones.

Love and parenthood

In the Jonathan Ross’ Saturday night show, the hit-maker broached topics which are massively covered in his new songs: love and parenthood. Suggesting his daughter was following his own footsteps for the moment, he shared anecdotes of his life with her and his wife, Cherry Seaborn.

“What we do is, I got really into vinyl in lockdown. I go down in the morning, I give her porridge, I pick one vinyl and flip it all day. [...] She loves Black Sabbath. That’s always a good one. Paranoid album. Starting off with War Pigs in the morning, it’s the best” - Ed Sheeran.

On top of those confessions, Lyra's father offered a little performance with an acoustic guitar to the audience.

Positive to Covid-19

"Equals" launching and promotion was disturbed when Ed Sheeran announced a few days ago he had been tested positive for Covid-19. Despite this, he said he wanted to honour all the meetings that he took. He said to his fans:

“I’m now unable to plough ahead with any in person commitments for now, so I’ll be doing as many of my planned interviews/performances I can from my house”.

And after the album comes the tour. Starting on the 23rd of April in Dublin, it should end on the 25th of September in Frankfurt, going through Ireland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, Austria and Switzerland. The date is booked for the singer: “I hope to see you on tour next year”, he pointed to the BBC.