Lyrics Interpreted: “Shape of You” — Ed Sheeran
The endearing Cheeto-haired distant cousin of James Corden has returned to the music airwaves with a song as mesmerizing as any before. From his latest album called Divide, whose symbol title is more difficult to locate on Microsoft Word’s template than a shallow song on Ryan Seacrest’s American Top 40 , Ed Sheeran has returned with a song that has captivated the world in the way Donald Trump daydreams during his intelligence briefings. “Shape of You” has claimed to have been intended for the pop goddess Rihanna, but after realizing that a lyric containing an allusion to the relative unknown crooner known as Van Morrison would be too obscure and damaging for the Barbadian empress so Sheeran proudly accrued the courage to accept this song.
What follows is a plea too sophisticated, too nuanced for your typical listener who admires Sheeran to fully grasp the song’s real themes. Which is why I have decided to take on the daunting task of mining through the virtuoso lyrics of the Holy British Triumvirate of Sheeran, Steve Mac, and Johnny McDaid. Like Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, this British holy trinity intends to hold the public at its nimble grip, delivering liberating and provocative ballads that, if alive centuries earlier, would have allowed the Roman Empire to last many centuries longer.
Here are the lyrics:
The club isn’t the best place to find a lover
So the bar is where I go
Sheeran laments the eternal relatable struggle of finding love as a millennial. How the club, with its tranquil lighting and friendly sounds, should be the ideal spot to find love. Yet like many young adults today, the club fails in its perceived romanticism. With concise wording, the bar is clearly the true place to find love. Whose sticky floors suck all nonsense to its ground, allowing sensible dreams of authentic love to permeate the distilled air. Sheeran has already revealed so much of his learnings from his 3-year sabbatical from music that this dissection still did not do his opening lyrics justice.
Me and my friends at the table doing shots
Drinking fast and then we talk slow (mmmm)
You come over and start up a conversation with just me
And trust me I’ll give it a chance now
This is clearly a revelation of the perils of drinking or just the sheer aptitude of Sheeran’s ability to attract women with his candy corn glow. But as the singer of the people, clearly too many have experienced similar moments where doing shots with friends at the bar leads to slow talk and igniting metaphorical sparks of literal love. The disclaimer to trust Sheeran just supplements his humility, but also how obviously remarkable of a man he is by not only observing the woman, but also listening to her obvious attraction.
Take my hand, stop
Put Van The Man on the jukebox
And then we start to dance
And now I’m singing like
The classic reference of a fragment of Irish culture in Van The Man does not fool many of Sheeran’s listeners. The romantic undertones of the simplicity of the wordplay in how he requests the woman to seize his hand, but stop and play the similar loving music of Van Morrison that only a pretentious hipster would know is nothing short of Nobel-ian. A lyric that Bob Dylan would tease the media with if he had the aptitude of Sheeran. By stating their actions of dancing, Sheeran leaves us to imagine the spectacle of such a movement while downplaying his explicit mundanity. But the banality of the dancing is spiced with his professing of singing, the death knell to this woman’s virgin ears.
Girl, you know I want your love
Your love was handmade for somebody like me
Come on now, follow my lead
I may be crazy, don’t mind me
Sheeran intends to find love and now that he has found his girl, he must state his affection. Dancing is too passé and bombastic of a romantic overture so he must resort to a vocal harmony that put the overdramatic dancing in its trivial position. There is also nothing more romantic than claiming that a love was handmade for somebody like him. The precision and care of imagined woodwork is obviously the intended image that corresponds with Sheeran’s use of the word “handmade”. Sheeran’s humility and self-deprecation when he claims to be crazy is comforting. There is nothing ludicrous in a man demanding a woman to follow him down to his love of which might not be returned. But who am I kidding? Love is always reciprocated, and for Sheeran it’s propagated.
Say, boy, let’s not talk too much
Grab on my waist and put that body on me
Come on now, follow my lead
Come, come on now, follow my lead (mmmm)
The desire to not use words for love while singing a song with words about love is peak Sheeran irony. But the verbal assault that follows is unsettling as the exclaimed power in this now physical exchange of love is best heard and not seen. The insistence of authority in a joint union is Sheeran’s missive regarding the hypocritical connotation of modern day relationships.
I’m in love with the shape of you
We push and pull like a magnet do
Although my heart is falling too
I’m in love with your body
Comparing his love to the natural ability, the niche of magnets is a brilliant metaphor. Shakespeare would tremble in his medieval chair if he were alive today, knowing he hadn’t made such a comparison and instead had to settle for proclaiming the world as a stage. By stating her shape, Sheeran professes his nondiscriminatory ways, a beacon of hope in such segregated times. His heart is falling as it is being drained of all love, a common problem faced by many millennials in relationships no matter how fleeting as they are quickly vanished from the Earth after such love and replaced by another faceless entitled dreamer.
And last night you were in my room
And now my bedsheets smell like you
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with your body
Recounting the events of the night before with poetic surprise in realizing how one’s bedsheets could have the smell of the previous inhabitant is Sheeran’s way in surmising how the obvious is not obvious when in love. How even when discovering new specific matters, he still thinks of her body as anything more would result in the exorcism of his heart, which would be a tragedy to profound literature and thought.
Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I’m in love with your body
Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I’m in love with your body
Oh I oh I oh I oh I
I’m in love with your body
Every day discovering something brand new
I’m in love with the shape of you
Sheeran adopted the flair of Native American chants with this lyric, hoping to convey the bare living of the founders of America with the simplicity of his love. He feels compelled to use the first person for nearly every other word as Sheeran knows he is the only one who matters now that he is in love with someone’s body, but nothing more as he would fall victim to the draining of his heart and all other bodily functions. The repetition of the previous verse’s lyrics is also a mirror to the maze in which Sheeran’s mind has entered in how he can only think of this woman’s body.
One week in we let the story begin
We’re going out on our first date (mmmm)
You and me are thrifty
So go all you can eat
We are teased of the potential downfall of Sheeran’s love as he begins to recount their first date, otherwise known as the beginning of the end for romance. Sheeran’s modesty cannot go unnoticed as he slips how he let a week pass before going to such drastic measures of romance. A humanizing factor of this song, the wait further relates the supernatural lyricist to the everyday bloke. Describing the shared thriftiness and his allowance of her going all you can eat is charming and endearing for future love. The frank nature of Sheeran’s emotions and finances is another reflection of the millennial lifestyle of transparency that was shoved under the rug during previous generations. Sheeran’s truly a gentleman for letting his beloved lady to go all you can eat, enjoying his love as one would at the romantic elegance of a Chinese buffet.
Fill up your bag and I fill up a plate
We talk for hours and hours about the sweet and the sour
And how your family is doing okay
Leave and get in a taxi, then kiss in the backseat
Tell the driver make the radio play
And I’m singing like
The image of a bag versus a plate is Sheeran describing how boundless his love is when compared with the woman whose love can be contained by an unimaginative bag. A bag that is most likely a brown paper bag or even a white plastic bag whose dimensions are constraining. The plate used by Sheeran is indefinite in its volume and grand in its hunger, another master stroke of brilliance in relaying millennial love. It is refreshing to see that this relationship has progressed to hours of discussion and its use of the flavors of food reinforces his cheeky, bubbly demeanor that would rival the omnipresent sun known as Zooey Deschanel. Sheeran cannot ignore his lover’s family as he wants to bring chivalry to the forefront of modern love. But the use of the taxi in the next line is a juxtaposition of the desire for a new age that is stuck in yesterday, a day still dominated by taxis. The subtle irony in Sheeran wanting the taxi driver to play the radio to his song while making love is how Sheeran wraps together this power ballad. With the closure only seen in a Christopher Nolan film, Sheeran reinstates his artistic supremacy with his meta conclusion and pointillistic composition where the dots finally reveal a stunning connected portrait of the trials of millennial romance.
Lyrics and accompanied video courtesy of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKOXV46WMHg
