Ed Sheeran has been teasing a new album for a few weeks now, and now it's official: his seventh studio album, Autumn Variations, will arrive on September 29.
The fall-themed album finds the singer-songwriter teaming up with the National's Aaron Dessner once again; the two collaborated on Sheeran's Subtract, which was released back in May.
Sheeran announced the album on socials with a video and a caption that reads, "Last autumn, I found that my friends and I were going through so many life changes. After the heat of the summer, everything either calmed, settled, fell apart, came to a head or imploded. When I went through a difficult time at the start of last year, writing songs helped me understand my feelings and come to terms with what was going on, and when I learned about my friend’s different situations, I wrote songs, some from their perspectives, some from mine, to capture how they and I viewed the world at that time. There were highs of falling in love and new friendships among lows of heartbreak, depression, loneliness and confusion.
"My dad and brother told me about a composer called Elgar, who composed ‘Enigma Variations’, where each of the 14 compositions were about a different one of his friends. This is what inspired me to make this album. When I recorded Subtract with Aaron Dessner, we clicked immediately. We wrote and recorded non-stop and this album was born out of that partnership. I feel he has captured the feeling of autumn so wonderfully in his sonics and I hope everyone loves it as much as I do."
No tour dates have been announced to support Autumn Variations. Sheeran is still on tour in the U.S. until September 23, when his Mathematics World Tour comes to an end.
Autumn Variations marks the first Sheeran album to not feature a mathematical title. So maybe this will be the first of four seasonally-themed albums? Guess we'll have to wait and see.