Ed Sheeran Announces New Album 'Autumn Variations' with 14 Songs Written About 14 Friends

Sheeran's upcoming record is set for release on Sept. 29

Only three months after Ed Sheeran released his studio album - (pronounced Subtract), he's ready to enter his new musical era.

In a video shared to his Instagram on Thursday, Sheeran announced that his newest album, Autumn Variations, is set for release on Sept. 29.

"Hello everyone. The sun is shining but autumn is coming. I have an album I've made called Autumn Variations. This is a record that I was sort of making at the same time as Subtract. It's what me and Aaron [Dessner] went in originally to make," Sheeran, 32, says in the video. "Elgar (a composer) has this thing called the Enigma Variation where he did 14 songs about 14 friends so I wanted to make 14 songs about 14 friends and base it on autumn."

He also included a lengthy caption alongside the video, where he expands on the concept of his upcoming record.

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"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," he wrote. "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."

Adding, "There were highs of falling in love and new friendships among lows of heartbreak, depression, loneliness and confusion."

He was then introduced to Elgar by his dad and brother, which inspired the album. After "immediately" clicking with Dessner, a producer, Sheeran said the album was "born out of that partnership" and it captures "the feeling of autumn."

The record is available to preorder and presave here.

The "Shivers" singer released Subtract in May, the latest in his mathematics series, where he covered a difficult period that spurred him to musically reflect on his "deepest, darkest thoughts."

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"I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art," he said in a March press release announcing the album.

He added, "Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade's worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts."

Since then, the singer-songwriter has been touring in North America for his ongoing + - = ÷ x (pronounced "Mathematics") Tour, which will span stadium venues across the United States and Canada before wrapping in September.

In the meantime, he's also made a series of surprise appearances for fans in the cities he tours including a Lego store, a Hot Dog restaurant and jazz clubs.

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