The 'Thinking Out Loud' hitmaker put his thoughts on his lyrics and wrote 'seven songs in four hours' after learning of his wife Cherry Seaborn's tumor diagnosis.
- May 1, 2023
AceShowbiz - Ed Sheeran penned "seven songs in four hours" after his wife Cherry Seaborn was diagnosed with a tumour. The 32-year-old pop megastar's spouse received the diagnosis last February when she was six months pregnant with their second child, Jupiter, and the "Bad Habits" hitmaker used songwriting to help him cope with his heartbreak.
"We had the diagnosis of the tumour and the next day Eds went down into the basement and wrote seven songs in four hours. Some people write a diary and get their emotions out through the pen and for Ed, if something really intense happens, he'll go and write a song," Cherry, 30, said on the Disney+ documentary "The Sum of It All".
The Grammy winner's best friends, Jamal Edwards and Shane Warne, also died within weeks of each other last year. Ed - who also has two-year-old Lyra with childhood sweetheart Cherry - said, "Music's always been like therapy to me."
"It was a way to get my thoughts and feelings down as a kid, and it works. It really works. The moment you find the worst thing has happened to someone you truly love, you feel like you're drowning and can't get out from under it."
The "Castle on the Hill" singer has been having weekly therapy. "The A Team" singer decided to get help after getting overwhelmed by the losses and his wife's health issues.
On an episode of "The Jonathan Ross Show" last month, he opened up about how therapy has stayed a key part of his life. He said, "I go once a week. Some weeks it's just complaining about something really insignificant and some weeks it's digging into heavier stuff. It's just good to talk. Before I would just not talk to anyone and keep it all bottled up and that's when you get lower and lower and lower."
The flame-haired star was left devastated when music producer Jamal, who gave him his first big break, died aged 31 in February 2022 after a cardiac arrest brought on by cocaine and booze aged 31.
Speaking about how his new track "Eyes Closed" is about his late friend, Ed said, "We both lived in the same area of London and I found after he passed away everywhere I went I thought I'd see him, because it was all the places we went to. The song is essentially that."
Asked by host Jonathan if the song is difficult to perform on stage, Ed said, "It's different now it's out. I find songs are so personal when you write them and they belong to you. The first time I ever played it I did a gig in Union Chapel I cried when I was introducing it, I cried during it and I cried after it. Because the song still belonged to me, it was still my story."
Explaining the meaning behind another track on the album, Ed added about "No Strings", "2022 was a year of lots of things happening with me and my family and I sort of said to my wife, 'If we can get through this, it's a breeze from here. Anything can happen from here and we're good.' "
