Musical buffet at Ed's diner is lacking a signature dish

Ed Sheeran returns with 'Play', a new album that's rich in influences but short on bangers. The latest from JADE and Sophie Ellis-Bextor have more bite

-  Louis Chilton

During a 2022 court battle over alleged plagiarism in Ed Sheeran's songwriting - a battle that Sheeran won - an opposing lawyer described the British musician as a “magpie”, who “borrows ideas and throws them into his songs”. Detached from

the matter of plagiarism, and shorn of any derogatory insinuations, this statement is plainly true - of most songwriters, yes, and it is true of Sheeran, who has turned so-called musical magpie-ing into a real labour of love.

In the new 13-track LP Play, the hugely popular singer-songwriter takes on the role of sonic globetrotter, purloining sounds and ideas from traditions around the world. Sheeran has always been unafraid to integrate different musical traditions into his songwriting - whether that's a reggaeton duet with J Balvin (“Sigue”), the Irish-inflected hit “Galway Girl”, or indeed the peppery, hip-hop-ish rap-singing that pervades his entire catalogue. Play, though, takes this ethos of cross-cultural integration one step further.

The album's lead single “Azizam” pulls from the Farsi music tradition, and is one of several tracks to make use of Iranian-Swedish producer Ilya Salmanzadeh, known for his shapeshifting and multicultural approach to beat-making. It's one of the album's better efforts, energised by a sort of off-kilter, tightly syncopated hook; instruments such as the Iranian santur give the track a distinctly Persian feel.

“Sapphire”, meanwhile, is a collaboration with Indian singer Arijit Singh, recorded in Goa with the assistance of Indian backing musicians. It's an uptempo mashup of Punjabi music and Western pop, weighed down by banal love song lyrics and Sheeran's penchant for pat simile. “The lights, your face, your eyes/ Exploding like fireworks in the sky”, he sings. (It seems that Sheeran finds explosions to be consistently fertile soil for romantic metaphor. “When everything is black and white, your colour's exploding,” he croons on “Camera”.)