Elevate December 2023 | Air Serbia

kultura / culture

We’ll be listening to him live in Belgrade soon What’s the secret to Ed Sheeran’s success? As part of his current Mathematics Tour, the Brit will visit Serbia for the first time, performing on Belgrade’s Ušć e confluence, but before that, in December, his limited- edition clear vinyl version of the album X is set to arrive

month hanging out together, the pair composed over 30 songs, 14 of which were singled out as a collection for the needs of this album. “I had been working on Sub- tract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art,” wrote Sheeran. “Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatev- er tumbled out… Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth. My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly, and I found myself standing in court defending my in- tegrity and career as a songwriter. I was spiralling through fear, depres- sion and anxiety,” the artist revealed. This September saw the release of another album, Autumn Variations, about which he wrote: “Last autumn, I found that my friends and I were going through so many life chang- es. After the heat of the summer, everything either calmed, settled, fell apart, came to a head or implod- ed… These songs are about love and friendships among lows of depres- sion, loneliness, disappointment.” Sheeran has positioned himself as one of the world’s best-selling art- ists, with sales exceeding 150 mil- lion records, while last year he was also the most followed on Spotify. This December, as part of celebra- tions marking the 75 th anniversary of Atlantic Records, a limited-edition ‘Crystal Clear Vinyl’ version of X is being released. This album was re- corded at various locations around the world, with fantastic producers like Rick Rubin (Eminem, Jay-Z, Red Hot Chilli Peppers), Pharrell Williams (Daft Punk, Robin Thicke, N.E.R.D), Benny Blanco (Rhianna, Wiz Khalifa) and Jeff Bhasker (Alicia Keys, Jay-Z). We impatiently await his arrival in Belgrade on 17 th August 2024.

Sa nestrpljenjem ga očekujemo u Beogradu 17. avgusta 2024. We impatiently await his arrival in Belgrade on 17 th August 2024

“Boring” and “asexu- al” certainly aren’t ad- jectives you’d ascribe to one of the world’s biggest pop stars , but those were the very words often linked to Ed Sheer- an’s name by journalists at the start of his career, only for the legendary Morrissey to spice things up even more when he said back in 2015 that “nothing could be worse” than Sheeran’s music! Yet despite everything, the scruffy British singer has gone on to achieve success that is inexplicable. Analysts looking into this phenom- enon have concluded that it helps that his music is multi-generation- al, while the fact that he is extreme- ly affable and universally inoffensive (which many people find repulsive), actually opens the door for him to be accepted by a wider demographic. And that’s how Ed Sheeran achieved global recognition with his debut album + (Plus), released in 2011, which includes hits like The A Team and Lego House. Following his debut, Ed’s success only con- tinued with the al-

bums x (Multiply) in 2014 and ÷ (Di- vide) in 2017, which hit the world’s music charts with the singles Sing, Thinking Out Loud, Shape of You and Castle on the Hill, after which came the album = (Equals). Sheeran completed his series of album releases inspired by mathe- matical symbols with the release of the album - (Subtract) in May of this year. This is his most intimate album to date, which pushed his own bound- aries as a singer-songwriter. It was thanks to Taylor Swift that Ed met Aaron Dessner of the band The Na- tional early last year. During just one

Pisanje pesama mi je postalo terapija i pomoglo mi je da shvatim svoja osećanja / Writing songs became my therapy and helped me make sense of my feelings

44 | Muzika » Music

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