Ed Sheeran reached a major milestone this week, but it had nothing to do with streaming numbers or album sales. Rather, on Wednesday, he turned 30 years old. Part of his celebration included hopping on Instagram and teasing a new album coming at some point in 2021.
Sheeran shared a photo of a pirate caterpillar birthday cake alongside a childhood photo of himself dressed as a pirate. He captioned his post, “30 today. Thank you for all your wonderful messages, I feel very loved. Currently dressed the same as I was on my 3rd birthday about to chow down on Colin the pirate caterpillar, poor bloke. I’ll be back online with the 4th instalment in the series later this year, until then xx.”
With “the 4th [installment] in the series,” Sheeran is presumably referring to his mathematically titled studio albums: 2011’s + (aka Plus), 2014’s x (Multiply), and 2017’s ÷ (Divide). Assuming that Sheeran follows the same naming convention with his next album, it would seem his upcoming album will be called –, aka Minus or perhaps Subtract.
This news comes after Sheeran announced at the end of 2019 that he was taking a break. Indeed, the artist had a quiet 2020, although he did end the year with a new song, which he made clear is “not the first single from the next album.”
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. .
