ED SHEERAN: Play (Gingerbread Man)
Verdict: Pop with emotional punch
ED SHEERAN has been doing some soul searching since releasing two acoustic albums — Subtract and Autumn Variations — in 2023.
Britain's biggest male pop star has spent the past two years taking his Mathematics tour around the globe, spending time with wife Cherry Seaborn and the couple's two young daughters, and enjoying the odd weekend off watching his beloved Ipswich Town.
Speaking this week on the 2 Johnnies Podcast, Sheeran, 34, also revealed that he plans to move his family to America for his next US tour, suggesting that the move from his Suffolk hometown of Framlingham could be permanent.
Change is clearly in the air — and the sense of flux extends to his eighth album, Play, touted as a return to 'big pop' after 2023's folky detours.
If Subtract was the final instalment of a decade-spanning series of mathematically-titled albums dating back to Plus in 2011, Play feels like the start of a fresh phase (with Autumn Variations a sidestep).
There are tracks that hark back to Ed's one-man-band roots, but also a shift towards a more global sound, with bhangra-style beats and songs sung partly in Hindi and Farsi.
On his two 2023 releases, Sheeran used songwriting to help him process the upheavals of the previous year, one which saw the death of his best friend, music entrepreneur Jamal Edwards, and health issues for his pregnant wife.
Play is more hopeful, acknowledging the hard times and grief while looking for glimmers of light.
'I have loved and lost, and feared and prayed, but now the day bursts wide and open,' he tells us on the aptly-named opening track Open.
He goes on to address his professional fears as younger rivals emerge ('If I look down, I can see replacements'), while concluding there's always solace at home ('All I need is Chez and my daughters, and a few friends to help me').
Built around his voice and guitar, with electronic backing kicking in on the second verse, it's a autobiographical beginning that looks at how Sheeran sees himself in 2025, while touching on his early days sleeping on fans' couches, his wife's health, two high-profile copyright battles ('two of them tried it, I won both cases') and the death of Edwards. It crams an awful lot into four minutes.
The move towards a global perspective, inspired by time spent in Asia on the Mathematics tour, comes to the fore on Sapphire, a catchy duet with Indian superstar Arijit Singh, and Azizam ('darling' in Farsi), a funky electronic number featuring Indian percussion and an Iranian dulcimer, co-written with Iranian-born Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh.
There's also plenty here for those who admire Sheeran for his knack of expressing universal experiences in simple pop songs.
Old Phone, on which he tells of his 'overwhelming sadness' at finding messages from one of his exes on a discarded mobile, is classic, old-school Sheeran, while Camera is a lavish, country-ish ballad that feels like an arena anthem in the making.
Play occasionally spills over into sentimentality, most notably on soppy ballad In Other Words, but it's still a convincing return — catchy enough to make an instant impression while containing enough emotional heft to stand up to repeated listens.
If it does turn out to be his British farewell, he'll be heading across the Atlantic on a high.
Play is out today. Ed Sheeran plays CBS Arena, Coventry, on December 5, and Co-Op Live, Manchester, on December 7 (edsheeran.com).
JADE: That's Showbiz Baby! (RCA)
Verdict: Assured solo bow
Releasing her debut solo single in July 2024, Jade Thirlwall could have played it safe and delivered a predictable dance-pop workout or ballad.
Instead, she came up with an unexpected epic in Angel Of My Dreams — a wigged-out patchwork of pop and rap that opened with a distorted sample of Sandie Shaw's Puppet On A String and moved through a series of off-the-wall tempo changes.
'Let's do something crazy!' she announced, suggesting that her own songs were going to be dramatically different to the music she made as one quarter of manufactured girl band Little Mix, who won The X Factor in 2011 and landed themselves five No. 1 singles before going on hiatus in 2022.
Angel Of My Dreams was so well received that Thirlwall scooped the best pop act prize at this year's BRITs.
Adopting the mononym Jade, she takes a similar spirit of chaotic adventure into her first solo album, That's Showbiz Baby!, which begins strongly before losing a little momentum.
Working with a string of seasoned collaborators — Mike Sabath, Lostboy, Cirkut, Pablo Bowman and fellow BRIT winner Raye — she nonetheless rises to the challenge of singing every song without the help of bandmates.
The South Shields singer, 32, has mixed feelings about the fame that a TV talent show gave her. On Angel Of My Dreams, she sings of 'selling my soul to a psycho' before admitting 'it feels nice in the spotlight'.
Then, on It Girl, she asserts she now has greater control as a solo artist: 'Gone is the girl that you could con... I'm not your thing, I'm not your baby doll.'
That's standard lyrical fare for a pop star keen to let us know they're now all grown-up, but the music generally backs up her confident approach.
It Girl takes up from where Angel Of My Dreams left off in its fractured pop and rap, and Before You Break My Heart is built around another discombobulated 1960s sample, this one from The Supremes' classic Stop! In The Name Of Love.
Elsewhere, Unconditional is a song inspired by her mother's battle with lupus, and Plastic Box a beautifully sung electronic banger about feeling jealous about your current lover's old relationships ('it's irrational and impossible').
Despite some generic moments — the routine dance-pop of Lip Service being one — this gets Jade's solo career off to a flying start.
That's Showbiz Baby! is out today. Jade starts a tour on October 8 at 3Olympia Theatre, Dublin (jadeofficial.com).
