Ed Sheeran Looks Back At ‘X’: ‘It Was Such An Important Album In My Career.
Ed Sheeran has reflected on how his second album, X, changed the course of his career in a new interview with Billboard.
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“I think at the time you don’t really realize what’s happening,” he said. “You go from one song to the next song to the next song. At the time, I was just happy that people are liking the songs and now I look back at the album, and it’s an album people really liked, which I guess is good. It took me from arenas to stadiums and I feel like it was such an important album in my career.”
“I remember Photograph taking a really long time to get production right. It look a long while,” he recalls. “That was the song that I didn’t really like at first because we spent so much time doing it and it ruined it. Now, I can look back and enjoy the process.”
“It’s important to never do the same thing twice,” Sheeran said. “Musically, I’m always like, ‘Have I said this before? Has a song sounded like this before?’ It’s less about what other people are doing, and more about what I’ve already done and constantly doing something different.”
Sheeran recently announced a tenth anniversary edition of the album. X (10th Anniversary Edition) will be released on June 21 and will feature nine bonus tracks, none of which have ever been available on vinyl before.
Sheeran’s second album helped turn him into a global superstar, with 22 million worldwide sales thanks to such hits as Don’t, Sing, Photograph and Thinking Out Loud. The bonus tracks include: Take It Back, Shirtsleeves, Even My Dad Does Sometimes, I See Fire (from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug), All of the Stars (from The Fault in Our Stars), English Rose, Touch and Go, New York and Make It Rain.
Sheeran will also play a special, one-off show at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on 22 May with a setlist reflecting his 24-track 2015 x (Wembley Edition) release.