1991-present
Latest News: Ed Sheeran Releases Play Album
Ed Sheeran’s latest album Play is a total vibe shift, and that’s no accident.
After tackling personal struggles with 2023’s - (Subtract), such as wife Cherry Seaborn’s cancer diagnosis and his own battle with depression, Sheeran purposefully embraced more joyful music for his new 13-track project released Friday, September 12. One of those is the dance-infused “Don’t Look Down.”
“The whole record is more for me. It made me feel good, and I’m just putting it in the universe and it all exists in people’s lives however it exists,” Sheeran told Gayle King. “But I think records to be primarily made for the artist first, ’cause then like, I don’t know, it’s just a product.”
The 34-year-old singer claims he wrote more than 300 songs during the album’s conceptualization, but ultimately prioritized creativity over commercial appeal. Sheeran has also been doing pop-up concerts to promote its release—so you just might catch a glimpse of him live.
Who Is Ed Sheeran?
Ed Sheeran is a singer/songwriter who began playing guitar at a young age and soon after started writing his own songs. When he was just a teenager, he moved to London to pursue his music, and his outpouring of creativity added up to several early EPs and hundreds of live shows. Drawing attention for his online performances, Sheeran hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart before he ever signed with a record label. Since signing with Atlantic, Sheeran has sold millions of records and won Grammys for hits like “Thinking Out Loud” and “Shape of You,” as well as his 2018 album, ÷ (Divide).
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Edward Christopher Sheeran
BORN: February 17, 1991
BIRTHPLACE: Halifax, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom
SPOUSE: Cherry Seaborn (c. 2019-present)
CHILDREN: Lyra and Jupiter
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aquarius
Early Life
Ed Sheeran was born on February 17, 1991, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. His parents are John Sheeran, a museum curator and exhibition organizer, and Imogen Sheeran, a jewelry designer and music educator. Ed also has an older brother, Matthew, who works as a music composer for television and film.
With his parents encouraging his creativity, Sheeran began playing guitar and showed immediate promise as a musician. When he was 11, Sheeran met singer-songwriter Damien Rice backstage at one of Rice’s shows, and the young musician found added inspiration. As the story goes, Rice told Sheeran to write his own music, and Sheeran set out the next day to do just that.
It wasn’t long before Sheeran was recording CDs and selling them, and he soon put together his first official EP, The Orange Room. With that accomplishment and his abiding ambition driving him, at only 14 years of age, Sheeran headed to London for the summer. Thinking he could find gigs in the big city, Sheeran left home with his guitar and a backpack full of clothes, and his musical career took flight.
Music Career: Top Albums and Grammy Wins
Once in London, Sheeran got busy recording and playing the local singer/songwriter circuit and quickly released two albums: a self-titled record in 2006 and Want Some? in 2007. He also began opening for more established acts, such as Nizlopi, the Noisettes and Jay Sean, and released another EP, You Need Me, in 2009, a year that found Sheeran playing more than 300 live shows.
It wasn’t until 2010 that Sheeran made the leap to the next level in his career, and it came via online media, a route Sheeran had learned to use with great effectiveness. When a video he posted online got the attention of Example, a rapper, Sheeran was asked to go on the road with him as his opening act. This led to an even larger online fan base and inspiration for many more songs, which ended up filling three new EPs, all in 2010.
When Sheeran headed to the United States in 2010, he found a new fan in Jamie Foxx, who asked Sheeran to appear on his Sirius radio show. Soon after, in January 2011, Sheeran released yet another EP, his last as an independent artist. Without any promotion, the record reached No. 2 on the iTunes chart, and he signed on with Atlantic Records that same month.
Stardom with + (Plus) and x (Multiply)
With Atlantic, Sheeran released his major debut studio album, + (Plus). An instant hit, the album sold more than a million copies in the United Kingdom in the first six months alone. Sheeran began co-writing songs with bigger artists, such as One Direction and Taylor Swift, and supported Swift on her 2013 arena tour.
On a roll, Sheeran’s next success would come when his song “I See Fire” was featured in the movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, and in June 2014, his next album, x (Multiply), appeared, debuting at No. 1 in the United States and the United Kingdom. The project featured three Top 10 singles—“Don’t,” “Photograph,” and “Thinking Out Loud”—with the latter winning the Grammy for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance in 2016.
÷ (Divide)
In 2016, Sheeran took a hiatus to work on his third studio album, ÷. In January 2017, he released two singles from the album, “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill,” which debuted at No. 1 and No. 6, respectively, on the Billboard Hot 100. Sheeran subsequently released ÷ in March 2017, and announced a world tour. His new album broke a Spotify record for first-day album streams with 56.7 million listens in 24 hours.
In late 2017, Sheeran delivered another hit with the love song “Perfect,” also released as a joint effort with Beyoncé, titled “Perfect Duet." The original version hit No. 1 on the Billboard Pop Songs and Adult Pop Songs charts in mid-January 2018. Later that month, Sheeran added to his Grammy haul by winning Best Pop Solo Performance for “Shape of You” and Best Pop Vocal Album for ÷.
No.6 Collaborations Project
May 2019 brought the release of the Sheeran-Justin Bieber track “I Don’t Care,” the first single from Sheeran’s upcoming studio album, No.6 Collaborations Project. An immediate success, “I Don’t Care” established a new single-day streaming record for Spotify. The English hitmaker followed with the releases of “Cross Me,” with Chance the Rapper and PnB Rock, and “Beautiful People,” featuring Khalid, with No.6 ultimately producing eight singles before picking up a Grammy nod for Best Pop Vocal Album.
- (Subtract) and 2025 Album Play
Sheeran released his sixth studio album - (Subtract) in May 2023, with the project receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album. The album was led by the top-20 track “Eyes Closed.” Another album, Autumn Variations, followed later that year.
Most recently, Sheeran released the 13-track album Play on September 12, 2025.
Top Songs
As of September 2025, Sheeran has seen two songs reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with “Shape of You” and “Perfect” spending a combined 18 weeks in the top spot. The singer has had seven additional top-10 hits, including:
- “Bad Habits” (No. 2 peak)
- “I Don’t Care” with Justin Bieber (No. 2)
- “Thinking Out Loud” (No. 2)
- “Shivers” (No. 4)
- “Castle on the Hill” (No. 6)
- “Don’t” (No. 9)
- “Photograph” (No. 10)
The singer has also charted through a variety of collaborations with other popular artists including Eminem, Camila Cabello, Travis Scott, Chris Stapleton, Luke Combs, and Bruno Mars.
Films and TV Shows
Sheeran has surfaced in numerous films as himself, including Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) and the Beatles-inspired musical Yesterday (2019). He also landed a recurring role in the 2015 FX series The Bastard Executioner, and later appeared in an episode of Game of Thrones and the Amazon anthology series Modern Love.
More recently, Sheeran had a planned cameo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) as a stormtrooper, but his scene was ultimately cut. However, the singer said in an Instagram photo he does appear as a fully-costumed alien. He also had an uncredited appearance in the 2021 Netflix action flick Red Notice.
In 2023, Disney+ featured the singer in a docuseries, Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All. The project followed his rise to music stardom and offered the best look at his personal life yet.
Copyright Lawsuits
As Sheeran’s fame swelled, so did the number of cases against the Grammy-winning artist seeking compensation for copyright infringement. In 2014, songwriters Martin Harrington and Thomas Leonard alleged that Sheeran’s “Photograph” was ripped off from their track “Amazing,” written for 2010 X Factor winner Matt Cardle. The case was settled out of court in 2017.
In 2016, the heirs of Ed Townsend, who co-wrote Marvin Gaye’s 1973 classic “Let’s Get It On,” claimed that Sheeran’s “Thinking Out Loud” borrowed extensively from the Gaye track. The case was dismissed the following year, but Sheeran was hit with a new lawsuit in June 2018 over the same song from Structured Asset Sales, which owned part of Townsend’s catalog. After a trial in which Sheeran played guitar to make his case, a court ultimately ruled in the singer’s favor in May 2023. “I’m obviously very happy with the outcome of the case. And it looks like I’m not having to retire from my day job after all,” Sheeran said.
In early 2018, Sean Carey and Beau Golden sought $20 million in damages over claims that “The Rest of Our Life,” co-written by Sheeran for country music stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, copied their song “When I Found You,” recorded by Jasmine Rae. The lawsuit was settled late in the year.
Wife Cherry Seaborn and Personal Life
Sheeran is married to Cherry Seaborn. The pair were friends in high school, but reconnected in the U.S. in 2015. The couple became engaged in December 2017, and the singer confirmed their marriage in 2019 through a lyric in his song Remember the Name. However, the actual date of the ceremony has never been shared publicly.
Sheeran and Seaborn have two daughters, Lyra (born in August 2020) and Jupiter (May 2022).
The couple revealed in Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All that Seaborn was diagnosed with an unspecified form of cancer in February 2022, while she was pregnant with Jupiter. “It made me massively reflect on our mortality. I would never agree to do anything like this but it made me think, ‘Oh if I died, what’s people’s perception of me? What do you leave behind?’” she explained. A tumor was removed from Seaborn’s arm, and she has since made a full recovery.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Seaborn previously worked at financial firm Deloitte.
Royal Honors
On December 7, 2017, Sheeran was made a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his services to music and charity.
After receiving the honor from then-Prince Charles, Sheeran gushed about the occasion, but also noted it was bittersweet: “My grandfather ... he died on this day four years ago, so it’s actually quite a nice full circle thing,” he said, according to the prince’s X account. “I guess he’d be pretty proud.”
Mental Health Struggles and Eating Disorder
In a March 2023 interview with Rolling Stone, Sheeran spoke candidly about his struggles with depression, alcohol addiction, and an eating disorder.
The singer said a series of stressful events the previous year—including Seaborn’s diagnosis and the death of his close friend, Jamal Warner—affected his mental health. “I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore. And I have had that throughout my life,” he explained. “You’re under the waves drowning. You’re just sort of in this thing. And you can’t get out of it.”
With Seaborn’s encouragement, Sheeran began speaking to a therapist. In the interview, he also admitted to previously using marijuana and other unspecified drugs, as well as abusing hard liquor. The birth of his daughter Lyra in 2020 was a motivating factor to improve his life habits.
Net Worth
Celebrity Net Worth estimates Sheeran’s total fortune at $350 million as of May 2025. A large portion of his earnings stems from his lucrative performing schedule, with his Divide Tour grossing more than $775 million by 2019 to become the then-highest grossing tour of any artist.
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