As a music critic, I occasionally feel compelled to turn a jaundiced ear to one of today’s happening artists. It doesn’t come naturally. Like most old people, I find the tastes of the younger generation both inexplicable and appalling. Take Ed Sheeran. You could say I was prejudiced against him from the start, because I nearly inhaled an entire cigarette upon first hearing his big hit single, “The Shape of You.” But you cannot judge an artist based on one song unless that artist happens to be Norman Greenbaum, and after taking a few muscle relaxants to numb my gag reflex gave Sheeran’s latest release, 2017’s Divide, a listen.
And all I can say is the horror, the horror. Humorless, infinitely cloying, and crammed full of unpleasant surprises, Divide is not quite as edgy as your average LP by Train, whose vapid taste for the pop inconsequential he has clearly inherited. Sheeran’s eclectic bland (no, that’s not a typo) of pop, folk, and hip-hop gives new meaning to the word generic. I’m not some hopeless rock bigot either. I love Coldplay. I love Robbie Williams, for Christ’s sake. But this… this thing is heinous. Unspeakable. One of the worst albums I’ve ever had to suffer through.
Remember when Paul McCartney said the world needs silly love songs? Tragically, the carrot-topped Sheeran took Sir Paul at his word. I find it hard to believe that even McCartney thinks the world needs Ed Sheeran’s heartfelt love songs, which are less silly than cloyingly saccharine. Paul McCartney, to his credit, can occasionally make saccharine work. Sheeran is no Paul McCartney.
First, the meager good news. Opening track “Eraser” is a likeable enough but utterly vapid example of British Hip-Hop done over easy, while “Castle on the Hill” has a propulsive beat and a melody that climbs towards the anthemic, and actually includes some lyrics that are not repellently empty. “Perfect” is a nice piece of popcraft driven by a church lady organ, and “Happier” could conceivably open the old tear ducts if you’ve just gone through a particularly traumatic break-up. “How Would You Feel (Paean)” sounds borrowed but the sentiment, god help me, sounds authentic. That said, I plan never to listen to any of the aforementioned songs again.
On the debit side of the ledger? A lot of songs that are wrong in all kinds of ways, but ultimately sink as a result of Sheeran’s inability to veer from that great white line that demarcates the middle of the road. White line? Make that white bread, because while Mr. Sheeran seems a friendly enough bloke, his stabs at soul are as phony as all of the well-produced but tepid beats he seems to have dug out of the secondhand-bin outside the neighborhood beats shop.
The album’s myriad shortcomings come to lethal perfection in the annoyingly perky “Shape of You.” I was foolish to think no song could top John Mayer’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland” in the “too stupid to constitute a serious case of objectifying women” department. And do we really need a red-haired Bruno Mars? Another song to avoid on pain of horrified petrifaction is “What Do I Know?” The clichéd melody and Sheeran’s “Aw shucks I’m just a guy remarking on the state of the world” pose are enough in and of themselves to send you running. Throw in Sheeran’s off-handed suggestions for remaking the world, and what we’re left with are two awful possibilities: (1) Sheeran is one very calculating cynic or (2) the poor lad’s head’s as empty as an Irish potato bin. I lean towards option 2, and almost feel sorry for the guy. His seemingly sincere assertion that we can change the world in a moment makes me want to trigger a global nuclear war, like right now, just to prove him right.
I could go on: “Dive” is soulful in a Huey Lewis kind of way, while “New Man” is the kind of song Jarvis Cocker might write if you surgically removed 90 percent of his brain. “Hearts Don’t Break Around Here” is sweet but includes the unforgivable lines, “Shakes my soul like a pot hole,” which not even Van Morrison could get away with. “Supermarket Flowers” is pure emotional exploitation and every bit as morally repulsive as Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven.”
Ultimately, Sheeran is a pop commodity whose high price tag utterly eludes me. And that’s not because I don’t like the pop charts. I grew up on them. I loved Elton John, America, and Barry Manilow even. It’s quite possible that the younger me would have responded positively to a song like “Perfect.” But God, I hope not. Because say what you will, Elton John never disappeared in the crowd. This dull wanker, on the other hand, makes James Blunt sound like a sharp instrument.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
D-
