Ed Sheeran Reveals Album Title Play, Sings "Old Phone" and Talks Writing "Shape of You" for Rihanna

Take it in. People love you. They love you. We love you. Welcome back to the show. Nice to be back. It is so good to see you. How is the family now? You have two little kids now. Two daughters, yeah, two little girls. Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. How old are they? Four and almost three. Oh, my gosh. Congratulations. You have a new single. Is it like Azizam? Yep. Azizam. What does Azizam mean? It's Farsi for my dear. And I was working with this producer, Ilya, who is Persian. And we were creating a lot of music. And he just suggested we do something within the Persian culture. And, yeah, it's great. We've actually done a full version in Farsi as well, which is quite... Really? Yeah, yeah. It's been cool, man. It's been really cool. Like, I feel like the Persian community has really embraced the song and what we've been doing with it. And I feel very, like, honored to be kind of, like, taken by the hand and shown different things. You're doing fun things, like, just surprising. Like, you debuted it in New Orleans. Yeah. Yeah, we did the second line there, which was... It's the greatest. It was so fun, man. It was so fun. I feel like the song itself, obviously, we created it within Persian culture originally. And then as I was doing it, like, I grew up with a lot of Irish trad music in my household. And I was like, these rhythms and scales are, like, the same as trad music. It's just different instruments. And then when I was in China, I was working with some classical musicians out there, and it was the same sort of thing. So I did a version with some traditional Chinese musicians, some traditional Indian musicians when we were touring there. And then we did some bluegrass musicians in Nashville, trad musicians in Ireland. And then, obviously, the second line. But it's very much, like, music is a universal language. Even if it is all in a different language, there's, like, this thread that goes through. Yeah, it's a different language. But, yeah, but we all speak in the same language because we know the beats. It's great being, like, in China. Like, I was there playing a song. No one could speak English. I was speaking through a translator. But then I'd play something, and they would play it exactly. And it would all been you'd sort of jello. It's really fun. You and I did some subway busking this morning. We did, yeah. And you won't see it tonight, but you'll see it eventually when we edit it together. But, man, you do a great Pink Pony Club. Thank you. Yeah, well, yeah. It's very well done. Thank you. Did your homework on that one. I did, yeah. But you've been touring all over the world now. Is the tour almost, is it coming to an end? Sort of. This particular tour with this particular stage. But I've sort of always toured since I was 16. And I don't plan on, like, stopping. I'm just doing it smarter. So I'm just, like, I do weekends. I do, like, seven months of a year weekends. And then I'm home in school terms, basically. But I think it's just doing it a smarter way. Like, when I was, like, 18, 19, it was every single day of the week. Every, you know, just travel, travel, gig, gig, gig, gig. Whereas now. You didn't know where you were. Yeah, whereas now it's more of, I have, like, I have a working week, and then I go away for a weekend and do gigs, and then I come back and sort of do it like that. And you're also doing different locations that you haven't done before. Yeah, I think that's the interesting thing about tour is, like, going to play places that we just went to, I want to get the pronunciation right, Hangzhou in China, which is, like, two hours from Shanghai, never been there before. We toured India for the first time, never been to some of these cities. And I kind of see it, I didn't get to do the, like, you know when you're 18 and you go backpacking and you do all that sort of stuff? So this is my bougie way of doing that, basically. Yeah. And do you get to try out new instruments and get new drums and everything? Everywhere, yeah. I've kind of, my studio's full of all sorts of instruments from around the world. And it's great to soak up culture. And everyone's always so, I guess when you meet people on a musical level, people are more inviting, I guess. And they want to share their culture and experience and stuff. We have a video of you playing Shape of You on the sitar. Yeah. Look at this. ♪ Shape of you, shape of you, shape of you ♪ ♪ You make my mood, my mood, my mood, my mood, my mood, my mood, my mood ♪ I mean, come on, that's fun. That's fun. Thank you. It's amazing. So fun, man. India as a spot, like India is, what I love about India is every hundred miles, the dialect changes, the food changes. And like, it's just the culture shifts. It's such a massive place. So we went all over and every single place there was something different. And yeah. I'd love to go. Yeah, hugely fun. Speaking of Shape of You, Shape of You is the second most popular song on Spotify out of any song. Not too shabby. I read somewhere that you originally wrote that for Rihanna. Yeah, Rihanna's like, I think out of any musician, Rihanna has the best taste out of anyone. She's always picks just really, really great songs. So as songwriters, you know, within the songwriting community, you're always writing songs to pitch to Rihanna. Like every single album that I've ever done, I've always gone, right, on the side, let's try and write a song that we can pitch to Rihanna. And it always makes like, Love Yourself, actually, the one I did for Bieber was originally a Rihanna in mind, like, oh, we should do something for her. No way! Yeah. She's like your muse almost. I promise you there'll be so many songwriters out there that their best song came from trying to write a Rihanna song, yeah. And then you just decided to go, I'm gonna take this one for myself, or I'll try it, or I'll give it a shot, or it's a demo, or whatever. Yeah, it's a weird one, because even though I wrote it, I didn't really feel like it suited me. And then I changed little bits about it, and like, I don't know, produced it with, it's got a lot of acoustic guitar slaps on it, so it sort of sounds like I would do it live, and then it suited me a bit more. And I had to get my head around it, though, because I very much wrote it with someone else in mind. But yeah. Your fans are dying to know what the new album is called. You've been dropping hints, and everyone's kind of guessing what the new album could be called. We can't wait for the album. Could you tell us, officially, what the album is called? Yeah, it's called Play, it's called Play. It is called Play. It's a great name! I love Play! Thank you. I had it, when I was like 18, I had an idea for like 10 albums, and it was plus, multiply, divide, subtract, equals, and then play, pause, rewind, fast forward, stop. So I've always had, I wanted to do 10. I'm kind of a bit obsessed with Tarantino, and I heard he was doing 10 films, and he's got his side projects, like Grindhouse, and he'll do that. So I want to do my 10, and every now and then do a side project here and then. That's so fun. Do you think you'll actually stop after a stop? Well, I kind of want to make an album for the whole of my life, where you put different songs on, and then it's in your will, that it comes out the day you die, and it's called Eject. I'm not joking, I think, imagine when McCartney passes away, and there's a record that he's made, that there's a song from when he's 16, there's a song from when he's 20, there's a song from when he's 30. It'd be fascinating. I really would. I'm not saying that I'm like, that you've done that, but. Yeah, I just think it'd be cool. I don't want to hear it, if you know what I mean. I don't want to hear it. There'll be lots of people who'll be like. I want you to be around. There'll be lots of people who are like, still from beyond the grave, you. I want to talk to you about this. You're doing your own pub over here in Massachusetts, over in Ipswich. Ipswich, Massachusetts, this Friday, in fact. Yeah. And you'll be there. Do you know what's interesting about this pub, is it will stand for two days. We're building, it's like a full working pub. But if you do it right, it's going to fall down after the first day. No, it's full. Shut it down. Yeah, it's this idea of the music video is basically the build of the pub with everyone locally. And then to get entry to it, you have to go on your old phone and find an old message that means a lot to you, or a video that means a lot to you and send it in. And then afterwards, we're going to project them on the walls and stuff. It's going to be cool. Serving Guinness and like Tate Tots and. It's going to be totally cool. That's fantastic. What is the, is that basically the meaning of old phone? Yeah, no, I had a song on my record. I, you know, I was in that lawsuit a couple of years ago. Yes, I remember that. In the, in the lawsuit, they order you to give up all your old devices. So I handed everything in, but I haven't used, I moved to a tablet in 2015, just on email. And so I switched my phone off 2015 and left it in a box. And then when I went through that lawsuit, I got my phone out again and had to go through like all the voice notes and the pictures and all that stuff for the, for the lawyers. And I switched it on and it was like going into a time machine. Like the first text was my friend that had passed away the year before. The second text was like an argument with an ex-girlfriend. The third text was a family member I hadn't spoken to in 10 years. Fourth text was another mate that died. And I was kind of like scrolling down. It really, really spun me out. And that day I wrote in my notes, like I found my old phone today and then finished this as a song. And then I ended up writing it into a song that that's the music video for, essentially. Well, we always happen to have a guitar handy. I did spot that. Yeah. If you ever feel the need to pick it up. I haven't. Could you give us a taste of? Yeah, this will be, this is, this will be the first time I've done it on to this many people. I play, I did it at the Bluebird in Nashville for about 30 people, but this will be the second time I played it. ♪ I found my old phone today ♪ ♪ In a box that I had hidden away ♪ ♪ Nostalgia trying to lead me astray ♪ ♪ Maybe I'll unwrite some wrongs ♪ ♪ I charged the battery again ♪ ♪ Combinations cause my passcode had changed ♪ ♪ Opened up and saw familiar names ♪ ♪ I wonder where they've gone ♪ ♪ Conversations with my dead friends ♪ ♪ Messages from all my exes ♪ ♪ I kind of think that this was best left ♪ ♪ There in the past where it belongs ♪ ♪ I feel an overwhelming sadness ♪ ♪ Of all the friends I do not have left ♪ ♪ Seeing how my family has fractured ♪ ♪ Growing up and moving on ♪ ♪ I found my old phone today ♪ Aw. Ed Sheeran! Ed Sheeran, when we come back, stick around!