Ed Sheeran Announces New Album ‘Play’ With Nostalgic Song ‘Old Phone’

Ed Sheeran hits rewind on “Old Phone,” the latest single from his forthcoming studio album Play, which doubles as a resurfaced time capsule and a teleportation device. The musician teased the record earlier this week with an Instagram account filled with unseen photos stored on an iPhone he had stopped using in 2015. Like the images, “Old Phone” is grainy, nostalgic, and a reminder of how much has changed in the past decade. With Play, out Sept. 12, Sheeran wants to move towards brighter days.

”‘Play’ was an album that was made as a direct response to the darkest period of my life,” Sheeran shared in a statement. “Coming out of all of that I just wanted to create joy and technicolour, and explore cultures in the countries I was touring.” Play was recorded in all the different locations the singer-songwriter visited and completed in Goa, India. It brought a lightness back to him, giving him some of “the most fun, explorative creative days of my life.”

“It’s a real rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish, it encapsulates everything that I love about music, and the fun in it, but also where I am in life as a human, a partner, a father,” Sheeran said. He first previewed the album with “Azizam,” an upbeat, vibrant single about letting go on the dance floor. “Going into this album campaign I said to myself ‘I just want everything I do to be fun and playful.’”

Sheeran first previewed “Old Phone” in an off-the-cuff acoustic performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in March. There, he traced its origin back to a few lawsuits he was embroiled in that required him to turn over his old devices, including a phone he stopped using in 2015 when he switched solely to email on a tablet. When he turned it on, he was pulled back in time by messages from two friends who had since died, an ex-girlfriend he was arguing with, and an estranged family member he hadn’t spoken to in a decade. “I was scrolling down,” Sheeran said at the time. “It really spun me out.”

Sheeran could have leaned into the melancholy while promoting Play, but he’s been having more fun letting it all go. “That’s why we are building pubs for folk jams, doing gigs on open top buses and singing in pink cowboy hats on bars,” he said. “The older I get the more I just want to enjoy things, and savour the moments that are mad and chaotic.”

Play is the first installment in a new series of albums from Sheeran. It will be followed by Rewind, Fast-Forward, and Stop, continuing the tradition he started with Plus, Multiply, Divide, Subtract, and Equals.

Play Track List
1. “Opening”
2. “Sapphire”
3. “Azizam”
4. “Old Phone”
5. “Symmetry”
6. “Camera”
7. “In Other Words”
8. “A LIttle More”
9. “Slowly”
10. “Don’t Look Down”
11. “The Vow”
12. “For Always”
13. “Heaven”