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As Ed Sheeran readies the release of his forthcoming eighth album, he’s revealed that fans won’t be left waiting too long between singles for fresh material given the record’s “broad” range of sounds.

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Sheeran’s comments were made during his appearance on the latest episode of Call Her Daddy, where he spoke with host Alex Cooper about his lyrics, his favorite memory of Taylor Swift, and the embarrassing story of being caught naked in a hotel lobby. 

The conversation also switched to the discussion of Sheeran’s new music, which includes the recently-released single “Azizam,” which will feature on his forthcoming album Play. While a release date for the record is yet to arrive, Sheeran used his appearance on Call Her Daddy to talk about the music that is still to come in the near future.

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“My idea was because the album is so broad, I didn’t want to just be like, ‘Here’s the single. Here’s the album,’ so there’s music coming every sort of two, three weeks,” he explains. “So there’s ‘Azizam’ now, there’s a song called ‘Old Phone’ that comes out in a couple of weeks, and then after that there’s another song coming. 

“We shot all these videos and I’m less about single moments and more about, I want people to sort of feel the breadth of the record and I’m very confident that one of the songs will work, but it’s more about just putting ’em out and letting people hear some of the record before it’s out rather than what I’ve done before, which is just like, ‘Here’s my first single. Here’s the album,’ and yeah.”

While Sheeran has already given fans a preview of “Old Phone” by playing it live on The Tonight Show, Cooper also queried the English musician as to how his new music differs compared to what he had released on previous albums.

“It’s definitely different. I think I’ve been more explorative with this album,” Sheeran explained. “I kind of had an attitude of ‘Why the f–k not?’ and not really felt like I have to be in a box of being a singer-songwriter, of like, ‘I have to do this or I have to do that,’ and I lived in India for a little bit and worked with a load of Indian musicians and producers and blah, blah, blah. 

“I made a song like ‘Azizam’ with Ilya who’s Persian and that’s in that world and ‘Old Phone’ I think is more in a Nashville country world and there’s just lots of different moments on the record, and the record is called Play and therefore it has to be playful. It has to be celebratory.”

Sheeran’s forthcoming eighth LP follows on from the release of his two 2023 albums, − and Autumn Variations, which peaked at No. 2 and No. 4 on the Billboard 200, respectively. They were his first records not to peak atop the chart since the release of his 2011 debut, +, and were followed in November 2024 with the standalone single “Under the Tree,” as featured in the Netflix film That Christmas.

As Sheeran explained during his chat with Cooper, the general vibe of Play is set to be far different to what what had arrived on his most recent albums.

“I released two albums that kind of, well, one was the sort of main album and one sort of came off the back of it, but they were both very depressing about quite hard hitting subjects, very muted,” he added. 

“I still think they’re beautiful records, but I feel like coming out of that, of you know, going through grief and all that sort of stuff coming out, I needed to have something that felt bright and colorful and playful and that’s where doing St. Patrick’s Day, playing at Tootsie’s in Nashville, doing the New Orleans thing, the whole record just has to feel like fun and exciting.”