Your support helps us to tell the story<\/p>\n
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.<\/p>\n
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.<\/p>\n
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.<\/p>\n
Your support makes all the difference.Read more<\/p>\n
During a 2022 court battle over alleged plagiarism in Ed Sheeran\u2019s songwriting \u2013 a battle that Sheeran won<\/a> \u2013 an opposing lawyer described the British musician as a \u201cmagpie\u201d, who \u201cborrows ideas and throws them into his songs\u201d. Detached from the matter of plagiarism, and shorn of any derogatory insinuations, this statement is something that is plainly true \u2013 of most songwriters, yes, and it is true of Sheeran, who has turned so-called musical magpie-ing into a real labour of love. <\/p>\n In the new 13-track LP Play, the hugely popular singer-songwriter takes on the role of sonic globetrotter, purloining sounds and ideas from traditions around the world. Sheeran has always been unafraid to integrate different musical traditions into his songwriting \u2013 whether that\u2019s a reggaeton duet with J Balvin<\/a> (\u201cSigue\u201d), the Irish-inflected hit \u201cGalway Girl\u201d<\/a>, or indeed the peppery, hip-hop-ish rap-singing that pervades his entire catalogue. Play, though, takes this ethos of cross-cultural integration one step further. <\/p>\n The album\u2019s lead single \u201cAzizam\u201d pulls from the Farsi music tradition, and is one of several tracks to make use of Iranian-Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh, known for his shapeshifting and multicultural approach to beat-making. It\u2019s one of the album\u2019s better efforts, energised by a sort of off-kilter, tightly syncopated hook; instruments such as the Iranian santur give the track a distinctly Persian feel.<\/p>\n \u201cSapphire\u201d, meanwhile, is a collaboration with Indian singer Arijit Singh, recorded in Goa with the assistance of Indian backing musicians. It\u2019s an uptempo mashup of Punjabi music and Western pop, weighed down by banal love-song lyrics and Sheeran\u2019s penchant for pat simile. \u201cThe lights, your face, your eyes\/ Exploding like fireworks in the sky\u201d, he sings. (It seems that Sheeran finds explosions to be consistently fertile soil for romantic metaphor. \u201cWhen everything is black and white, your colour\u2019s exploding,\u201d he croons on \u201cCamera\u201d.)<\/p>\n Whether you call a song such as these an act of homage, appropriation, or bastardisation might come down to perspective, but is it really so different in intention to a classic such as Paul Simon\u2019s Graceland? In any case, as Play goes on, it eases into more conventional pop-ballad territory, and the tempos let in a little room to breathe. Some of the album\u2019s best tracks are actually its simplest \u2013 patient, straightforward tear-jerkers such as \u201cSlowly\u201d, and the soothingly bland \u201cFor Always\u201d. <\/p>\n The production is slick and glossy throughout, and Sheeran\u2019s singing is reliably rich in emotion. But Play is still shaggy. It\u2019s claimed that Sheeran culled hundreds of potential compositions to settle on the final 13 tracks; he\u2019d have done well to shed another two or three. Upbeat breakup anthem \u201cA Little More\u201d is overly generic in the sung-through sections, and actively irritating when he starts rapping. \u201cOpening\u201d may be the worst offender when it comes to Sheeran\u2019s zeal for spitting bars: there are shades of Irish folk music in its mellifluous beginning, which then gives way to an extended and meretricious rapped section. It\u2019s not that Sheeran can\u2019t rap \u2013 he\u2019s got speed, that\u2019s for sure \u2013 but he takes a whole lot of words to say not very much at all.<\/p>\n There is evident ambition on Play, but not a holistic or thorough one. Probing attempts to broaden Sheeran\u2019s sound are offset by melodic and lyrical choices that are too safe. The Irish, Iranian and Indian influences are more diluted by the steadfast Sheeran sound than they are able to enhance it. This may be a buffet of an album, but it\u2019s crying out for a signature dish.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-138397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}