There is huh?
And then there is HUH???
This is HUH???
I get it, Ed Sheeran is a many faceted and beautiful thing; happ with hip hop and happy with pop ballads, a man of many moods who can play most types of music.
I get it.
But this is not up to anything at all. Why, if he can play anything he wants, is he making generic EDM pop music like he is, not Taylor Swift, which you might figure, but Katy Perry which doesn’t figure. Really.
Produced by Pharrell Williams, this isn’t as good as the stuff on Pharrell’s new album and it isn’t as good as the stuff on Ed’s old album: handclapping, rapping, falsetto singing, synth lines by the dozens, typical lyric: it seems to be a desperate move into modern popdom where, kinda obviously, none was needed.
Why would Ed want to sound like everybody else when he has always made a living being who he is. It seems that, not unlike Taylor with Red, there is a move to remain current and “Sing”, his new single, is nothing if not current, but unlike Taylor, he isn’t strong enough to imprint his own personality on Pharrell’s lick of electronic paint. The rap is terrible, the beat is nothing special and the song disappears in the slightest of burrs.
Will it do the trick and break Ed into the first tier (though after selling out MSG for three nights, I’m not sure why he felt a pop move was necessary). It might (it is breaking radio as I write this) but it is an enormously sad thing.
Grade: C+
