Ed Sheeran’s Equals doesn’t quite add up

“Everything’s changed but I’m still the same somehow,” Ed Sheeran sings at the start of his new album, known as Equals after the mathematical symbol with which it is titled. This “really personal record”, in his words, follows his getting married and becoming a father. The opening track “Tides” welcomes his new life with cresting waves of anthemic guitars. Their emotive sound bears the imprint of a regular songwriting partner, Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid: no change there.

His Midas touch is also unaltered. Equals was preceded by the huge hit single “Bad Habits”, which spent 11 consecutive weeks at number one in the UK. Sheeran, with 52 weeks, now trails only Elvis Presley (80) and The Beatles (69) for most time spent at the top of the UK singles chart. His fourth solo album aims to show that he is “still the same somehow” despite this outlandish level of success. It triangulates between ordinary Ed, the former busker from Suffolk, and extraordinary Ed, maker of the most streamed song ever with “Shape of You”.

“I thought it’d feel different, playing Wembley/80,000 singing with me,” he sings in “First Times”, referring to his run of sold-out shows at Wembley Stadium in 2018, the first solo act to headline there without backing musicians. It came during his “Divide” world tour, which earned $776m, the highest-grossing ever. In a reverse humblebrag, the song proceeds to contrast the odd feeling he experienced after selling out Wembley with the pleasure he experienced sharing a beer afterwards with his soon-to-be wife, Cherry Seaborn. “Ain’t it funny how the simplest things in life can make a man?” he sings, a grandiloquent sentiment trying its best to be folksy.

His old musical familiar, the acoustic guitar, leads the tune. “Turn off the world and your telephone/I need to tell you you’re beautiful,” he serenades Seaborn in another acoustic number, “Love in Slow Motion”. Hints of Gaelic folk pitch the song as the settled-down, mature successor to the daft “Galway Girl”. “Time stops to still/When you are in my arms,” he sings in “Tides”, addressing his baby daughter. The waves of anthemic guitars pause as he sings the refrain. But then they start up again: Sheeran is unwilling to give up the routine of sold-out stadiums.

Linking with his previous work, the album makes sure to cover all bases in his songwriting. “Collide” and “2step” renew his links to black British music with polished bursts of drum-and-bass and passages of rapping. “Overpass Graffiti” follows previous songs like “Photograph” in paying tribute to a fondly remembered but finished relationship. “Bad Habits” finds him in the implausible role of a hedonist getting up to mischief in a nightclub. The song’s brash electronic beat amplifies the dance floor direction taken with “Shape of You” in 2017. So, more elegantly, does the pizzicato synth-pop of “Shivers”.

An expert sentimentalist, Sheeran knows which buttons to press in his songs, and he usually manages to do so without sounding cynical. His clear, boyish voice speaks persuasively of decency and sincerity. But the contrivance is too pronounced on this occasion as he shuttles between the public world of the charts and the private sphere of tracks like “Sandman”, a mawkish lullaby to his baby. Equals has been assembled with some skill and is fitfully engaging, but it doesn’t quite add up.

★★☆☆☆

‘= (Equals)’ is released by Atlantic Records