Ed Sheeran has been all around the world. The singer-songwriter – one of the best-selling musicians of all time, with a number of Grammy and BRIT Awards, an Ivor Novello, an Emmy and even an MBE for companies to music – has spent the final three and a half years touring the world for his Mathematics Tour. This has taken him in all places from Belgium, Lithuania and Bulgaria and Bhutan, China and Bahrain, however touring the world would not all the time go hand in hand with exploration – to actually journey, and get below the pores and skin of a vacation spot. “As a touring artist, I’m not always able to soak up the places I visit,” Ed tells Condé Nast Traveller. “The older I get, I want to make sure I capture the places I’m lucky enough to visit, so I can look back on them with my kids.”
For his newest album, he tried to rectify this. When recording Play, his eighth studio album, he spent a month in India. His single, Sapphire, was created with Indian musicians as a celebration of Indian tradition and heritage. He teamed up with Arijit Singh, an award-winning Indian singer and composer, and ended up releasing a reworked version of the track, that includes a verse and a refrain sung in a combination of Hindi and Punjabi.
He has beforehand said that “Play was an album that was made as a direct response to the darkest period of my life. Coming out of all of that, I just wanted to create joy and technicolour, and explore cultures in the countries I was touring.”
“I made this record all over the world, finished it in Goa, India, and had 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. The older I get, the more I just want to enjoy things, and savour the moments that are mad and chaotic.”
Below, Ed let us have a uncommon sneak peek at footage from his private digicam, exhibiting us behind-the-scenes images from his time in India, every annotated with his ideas and emotions from each vacation spot he visited throughout the nation.
Hyderabad, India
Ed Sheeran