Ed Sheeran flooded his fans with updates last month. He’s headed to North America in 2023 to continue his Mathematics Tour and is currently filming a documentary. He popped by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, where he discussed gifting Elton John a marble penis status and performed “Shivers.” And this week, he celebrated a “Shivers” milestone while adding more to next year’s slate.
“So, ‘Shivers’ has just hit a billion streams on Spotify, which makes it my 11th song as an artist and 15th song as a writer. I’m over the moon about it. Thank you everyone who’s been streaming that song,” Sheeran said in an Instagram video. “I’m gonna celebrate by shooting a music video for my brand new album, which will be out next year. See you in a bit.”
Sheeran became the first artist to eclipse 100 million Spotify followers this summer. The four-time Grammy winner explained the long-held vision for his discography on the November 1, 2021 episode of Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard, shortly after the arrival of his = (Equals) album. He was inspired by Coldplay to follow a mathematical title cadence (2011’s Plus, 2014’s Multiply, 2017’s Divide, 2021’s Equals).
“Very, very young, I was like 18 or 19, I just decided — I was like, ‘Right, I’m gonna do five math symbols as my albums. One’s gonna be orange, one’s gonna be green, one’s gonna be blue, one’s gonna be red, one’s gonna be yellow. And you’re gonna just see a poster, and the poster’s gonna have an equals sign on the on it, and you’ll know what it is.'” Sheeran said.
He added that the Mathematics Tour is his version of a greatest hits tour without needing to be billed as a greatest hits tour, and his plan was for Equals to be “the end of the equation” but noted that he’ll probably do a No. 7 Collaborations project between Equals and the next math-related album. “I’m gonna make 10 symbol records, but the next five won’t be maths,” he clarified.
So, the question is no longer when Sheeran’s next project will drop but whether 2023 will bring Subtract or No. 7 Collaborations. In the meantime, fans can listen to Sheeran’s Pokémon track “Celestial.”
Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. .
