And Finally Artist News Releases

We’d have the new Ed Sheeran album already, if it weren’t for Donald Trump

By Andy Malt | Published on Wednesday 18 January 2017

Donald Trump’s not even president yet, but it’s already looking like his stint in the White House is going to make it very hard to plan an album release campaign. U2 have already said they’ve cancelled the release of their new album because it no longer seems relevant in the wake of Trump’s election win. Now it turns out that Ed Sheeran’s new album ‘Divide’, set for release in March, was supposed to come out last November.

“The plan was to come [back] in September and then the album was meant to come in November”, Sheeran told Zane Lowe on Beats 1. “But the week the album was coming out was the week of the presidential elections [and] that was just a shitstorm of media. I was like, obviously if I come out with a record then no one’s gonna care. Then the week after [the election] Bruno [Mars] came out, the week after [that] The Weeknd came out and I was like…”

Yeah, those albums did do alright in the end, didn’t they? But what fun is it releasing an obviously Q4 album in Q4? No, Q1 is the quarter for our Ed. And he agrees. “It feels like a clean start this year though. Any time I’ve come out there’s always been another person”.

You hear that, all other artists releasing new music in Q1? Ed Sheeran just said you’re shit. To be fair, I think Ed Sheeran’s allowed to do that.