A number of the songs were written the day Seaborn’s tumor was discovered. Debuting Subtract songs at a solo show in London’s Union Chapel, he finds himself routinely overwhelmed, crying openly as he attempts to tell a crowd of strangers what Jamal meant to him. The doc offers fly-on-the-wall access to Sheeran and Seaborn’s private conversations, poking into stolen moments before and after concerts where we can watch the singer-songwriter turning his chipper public face on and off. “Makes me feel better.” You also feel the compromises made to strike a balance between the artist’s intentions and the objective of molding deeply personal experiences into a successful product. “I have to write songs,” Sheeran explains at one point. Taken together, they make an intriguing examination of music’s practical applications. The rough months after the tragedy are the focus of – (Subtract), the closer in his mathematical-equation set and Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All, a Disney+ docuseries following him from home movies and early performances to the compound heartbreak and healing that happened as he wrote, sang, and performed his way through the worst year of his life. The chase of appending modern production flourishes to his recursive folk-pop formula and telegraphing the tastes of an international audience at each step of a decade-long search for the median sound had rewarded him royally now, he could either take time to heal with his family or tough it out and hit the road. The timing was crushing: Sheeran had already made a massive work commitment, having announced the Mathematics Tour, a year of stadium engagements around the world to celebrate his quadriology of arithmetic-themed studio albums - 2011’s + (Plus), 2014’s x (Multiply), 2017’s ÷ (Divide), and 2021’s = (Equals) - through which the busker and loop-pedal geek transformed into a pop-culture phenomenon. In February 2022, Ed Sheeran learned that his wife, Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant with their second child and that his best friend, Jamal Edwards - a savvy West London music fan who founded SBTV, an outlet for new artists that helped break Dave, Stormzy, and Sheeran himself - passed away at 31. Sheeran’s Subtract flips between devastating earnestness and saccharine overreach.
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