Play (Ed Sheeran album): Difference between revisions

 

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* Juan Arguello – engineering assistance (10)

* Juan Arguello – engineering assistance (10)

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==Charts==

{| class=”wikitable sortable plainrowheaders” style=”text-align:center”

|+ Chart performance for ”Play”

! scope=”col”| Chart (2025)

! scope=”col”| Peak<br />position

|-

{{album chart|Oricon|23|date=2025<!– needs to stay YYYY-MM-DD –>-09-22/p/3|rowheader=true|access-date=17 September 2025}}

|}

==Release history==

==Release history==

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! scope=”col”| Edition(s)

! scope=”col”| Edition(s)

! scope=”col”| Label

! scope=”col”| Label

! scope=”col”| {{Abbr|Ref.|Reference}}

! scope=”col”| {{Ref.}}

|-

|-

! rowspan=”5″ scope=”row” | Various

! rowspan=”5″ scope=”row” | Various

2025 studio album by Ed Sheeran

Play is the eighth studio album by English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran.^[1] It was released on 12 September 2025 through Gingerbread Man Records and Atlantic Records under license to Warner Music.^[2] A follow-up to his seventh studio album Autumn Variations (2023) and compilation album +−=÷× (Tour Collection) (2024), it is the first of Sheeran’s planned five albums^[3] with titles based on media control symbols, with Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind, and Stop to follow.^[4]

On Play, Sheeran collaborated with various producers and musicians, including Ilya, Blake Slatkin, Cirkut, Omer Fedi, Savan Kotecha, Elvira Anderfjärd, and Johnny McDaid. The album was supported by five singles: “Azizam“, “Old Phone“, “Sapphire“, “A Little More“, and “Camera“. To promote Play, Sheeran is set to embark on the Loop Tour in December 2025 across Europe and Oceania. The album received generally positive reviews from critics.

After releasing two acoustic albums in 2023, − and Autumn Variations, Sheeran announced in December 2024 that with Play, he is getting back into “big pop“.^[5][6] In March 2025, he also confirmed the titles of two other songs from Play: “Old Phone” and “Sapphire“.^[1] Sheeran performed several songs from Play during the final 2025 leg of his +−=÷× Tour.^[7][8]

The lead single, “Azizam“, was released on 4 April 2025 and debuted at number three on the UK Singles Chart and number 28 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States.^[9] The second single, “Old Phone“, was issued on 1 May 2025.^[10] The third single, “Sapphire“, was released on 5 June 2025, reaching number five in the UK and number 74 in the US.^[11] The fourth single, “A Little More“, premiered on 7 August 2025.^[12] “Camera” was released as the fifth single on 12 September 2025, alongside the album.^[13]

Play received generally positive reviews from music critics. On Metacritic, the album has a weighted average score of 61 out of 100 based on four reviews, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.^[15] The review aggregator site AnyDecentMusic? complied five reviews and gave the album an 6.1 out of 10.^[14]

Billboard‘s Thomas Smith wrote that Play is a “buoyant record that traverses moods and continents” and that this is “Ed back at his vibrant best”.^[23] The Irish Times‘s Ed Power described the album as “enjoyably moreish” and stated that Sheeran sounds as if he’s back on form.^[20] Alexis Petridis from The Guardian defined Play as “solid” and “dependable”. He felt that despite embracing Indian and Persian sounds on selected songs, the album goes back to basics, but with some “surprising undercurrents”.^[18] He highlighted “Symmetry”, which opens with looped Indian percussion and vocals but quickly floats off in a different direction, involving spectral voices and heaving sub-bass, and “Don’t Look Down”, which “fruitfully” places Sheeran’s vocal amid luminous rave synths and, eventually, a pounding house beat.^[18]

The Independent‘s Louis Chilton wrote that Play‘s production is “slick and glossy” and that Sheeran’s singing is “reliably rich in emotion”.^[19] He named “Azizam“, which pulls from the Farsi music tradition, as one of the album’s better efforts, and highlighted “Sapphire“, an uptempo mashup of Punjabi music and Western pop.^[19] NME‘s Jordan Bassett praised “Don’t Look Down”, which he called a “psytrance banger”, that could have been in the trailer for “one of those ropey Matrix sequels in 2003″.^[21] Maya Georgi from the Rolling Stone felt that Sheeran taps into some fun cross-cultural rhythms, but he mostly sticks to his trusty formula.^[22] She praised the “sultry” dance-floor number “Symmetry”, which has a “thumping heart that can get anyone dancing”.^[22]

• ^{^[p]} signifies a primary and vocal producer
• ^{^[v]} signifies a vocal producer

Credits adapted from Tidal.^[24]