An unsurprisingly sexist album sure to make millions
I don’t tend to write and submit negative reviews for The Ontarion’s Arts and Culture section. I say to myself and to any writer who writes critically of acts (especially local acts), that we are emphatically not Pitchfork.
We do not need to tear artists down for perceived flaws (art is, after all, subjective) because it is mean and, above all, may prevent someone from creating something out of fear of negativity.
All that being said, Ed Sheehan’s Divide, is truly, unbelievably hideous. It isn’t hideous for the music, or Sheeran’s singing, or the arrangement of the tracks—that’s all fine, if perhaps trite, boring, and indistinguishable from his previous releases. What is truly, insipidly hideous about Divide is the rampant misogyny in several songs that Sheeran sing-shouts.Usually, his “fuckboyness” comes from tongue-in-cheekily criticizing the bracket that no doubt accounts for most of his album sales. In “What Do I Know?” he sings, “I’m all for people following their dreams. Just remember life is more than fittin’ in your jeans.” I am so glad you commented on the vapidity of your fanbase—you’ve changed my life. I will put down the salad and pick up a physics textbook, all thanks to you.
In other songs, it becomes more heated as he navigates the slippery slope from being kind of a jerky ex, to a downright obsessive asshole. In “New Man,” he sings that an ex-lover’s new boyfriend is “on a new diet and watches what he eats. He’s got his eyebrows plucked and his arsehole bleached.”First, thank you for conjuring in my head the image of you, slouched on a couch, chip crumbs (sorry, crisp crumbs) everywhere, relentlessly stalking your ex and her new love interest (he admits to doing this in the song too. I can’t make this stuff up).
Later, in the same song, Sheeran sings, “He wears a man bag on his shoulder, but I call it a purse,” inferring to his listeners that any sign of “femininity” is bizarre and, above all else, unwanted.
Next, he levels his criticism at his ex, who probably broke up with him because he’s the kind of terrifying “nice guy” that girls warn each other about. He condemns her, singing, “Now you’re eatin’ kale, hittin’ the gym, keepin’ up with Kylie and Kim.”
Like, dude, what is wrong with any of that? Kale is delicious and physical exercise does wonders for not only your physical health, but your mental health as well.Sheeran, self-righteous as any man with an opinion and a keyboard, sneers time and time again “You’ve changed” to his ex-girlfriends.
As for Kylie and Kim, he doesn’t need to infer that taking an interest in incredibly savvy business women and enviably loving sisters is somehow a bad thing. Even if she’s just in it for the catfights, there’s nothing wrong with that. People—especially women, given how often their interests are derided—get to like what they like.
Also, can we take a minute to acknowledge that Ed Sheeran is one of the wealthiest artists on the planet, but in every album on at least one song, he needs (like he needs air to breathe) to remind the listener that he never went to university, that he comes from a working-class family, and this somehow (in his gold-gilded, silver-tongued mind) means he gets to play the poverty card at every turn. It’s disingenuous and it’s insulting. Sheeran sings, “I’m just a boy with a one-man show. No university, no degree.” We know. You’ve mentioned it no fewer than three other times in other albums.This is an album that will be purchased by adults, by students, by teenaged girls, and by teenaged boys who will listen to the album and think it’s okay to demonize women for their interests and for their decisions to move on. It is an album that consistently praises the docile mother-figure of young women, wherein women perform hours and hours of unpaid emotional labour, only to be made into a scathing song once she gets tired of listening to his “problems” and breaks up with him because he hasn’t asked her how her day was since they started dating.
This album praises the woman who accepts him unthinkingly for his faults, marries him, and has children with him—that’s all fine, but only if you aren’t an unimaginable ass who presents no other alternative for a woman’s identity and promises no real support. Time and time again, he tells us he’s a “fuck-up.” No person wants to settle down with someone who won’t lean in. I hope Sheeran realizes that soon.
Photo courtesy of Ed Sheeran.