Ed Sheeran‘s going to release his new LP, PLAY, in September, but he’s not very enthusiastic about the whole “putting out an album” thing.
Speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast, Ed declares, “The two joys of my life professionally are writing songs and performing and actually everything in between. I f****** hate releasing music. I really, like, find the whole process quite stressful.”
And why is that? According to Ed, “You love the songs so much and then suddenly you’re putting them out there, and that might change your relationship with them if other people don’t like them.”
“I find that when you’ve written a song, there’s so much, like, possibility and … you’re playing it to people and getting excited about it. … I find, like, releasing it just kind of sucks the joy out of it,” Ed says.
“If you release a song that you love that either gets critically savaged or doesn’t do well commercially, you then start to doubt the song. I’m trying to really take myself out of that and just be like, I like the song and that’s what matters. But you can’t help but be swayed by public opinion, I guess.”
Another thing Ed says he doesn’t like about his job is the need to protect his two daughters’ privacy. “I can’t take them to zoos or parks or anything really without someone trying to film them,” he tells Theroux. “I don’t want my kids’ image out there on a stranger’s phone or device.”
“So those are the times where the normal parts of life are … [you] kind of mourn for [them] and [I] sort of wish I could push my kid on a swing in a public park and it not be weird, you know?”
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