REVIEW: Ed Sheeran — №6 Collaborations Project
International pop superstar Ed Sheeran has just released his new album, №6 Collaborations Project, a DJ Khaled-style attempt at a project that bridges the gap between popular artists in the music industry. Unfortunately, this album fails to remain consistent throughout it’s 15 tracks, leading to an amalgamation of songs whose quality ranges from passable to horrific.
The album starts on a surprisingly strong note with the first few seconds of the song “Beautiful People”, showcasing some nice production and a decent melody. However, the track doesn’t hold up after the first few seconds, as Sheeran’s unenthusiastic and overproduced vocals take up a majority of the song. Couple this with the elementary lyricism on display, and the song isn’t able to become anything worth listening to a second time, despite the positive qualities found in the production and Khalid’s singing.
The next track, “South of the Border”, is much more indicative of the quality of the album that follows it. It’s thoroughly derivative and uninteresting (apart from some abhorrent bars from Cardi B’s verse), featuring another underwhelming vocal performance from Sheeran, who unsuccessfully attempts to combine singing and rapping in his first verse. This is the beginning of a recurring issue seen throughout the album, which is Ed Sheeran’s very noticeable lack of ability when it comes to rapping. We’ve seen glimpses of this on Sheeran’s previous record, Divide, but on this record, he really takes this to another level throughout the project. It’s most prominent on the song “Take Me Back To London”, a song featuring a fairly decent verse from British rapper Stormzy. Although this first verse is strong, the track is annihilated by one of the worst choruses I’ve heard in a long time. Every time Sheeran repeated the embarrassingly childish lyrics (“Jet plane headed up to the sky, spread wings in the clouds getting high, we ain’t hit a rave in a while, so take me back to London”), it would become a brand new punchline which would cause even the most stone faced individual to burst into raucous laughter. The song’s problems don’t stop there, as during Stormzy’s second verse, Sheeran saw fit to interrupt Stormzy throughout the verse, which only serves to emphasize the difference in quality between Sheeran and an actual rapper. Every time Sheeran fancies his chances at rapping on this album, he manages to bring a grinding halt to whatever song he appears on.
The song “Best Part Of Me” is probably the best song on the record, as Sheeran returns to his strengths as a singer-songwriter, indie pop performer. However, this is one of the few tracks where the featured artist actually brings down the quality of the song, with YEBBA’s strangely whiny voice mixing horribly with Sheeran’s vocals.
The album continues with lots of forgettable, generic, and sleep inducing tracks like “I Don’t Care” and “Antisocial”, songs which somehow feature absolutely nothing musically interesting, and feel like filler tracks only added to increase the streaming numbers from the album. After these songs, the quality takes a deep nosedive for the worse, especially on the track “Feels”. It’s the most tone-deaf song featured thus far, with horrible autotune, an oddly unsettling melody in front of the beat, and even more mindless lyricism (complete with more cringeworthy bars). The song “Nothing On You” has some interesting synths being used in the background, but has nothing else to bring to the table. “Way To Break My Heart” is a thoroughly strange EDM song, something which Ed Sheeran, of all people, should not appear on. And last but not least, we have the song “BLOW”, a true head-scratcher of a track. It may have given me a PTSD throwback to one of the worst songs of 2017, Eminem’s “Remind Me” off of Revival. The guitars are at the same time overblown, overmixed, and yet completely uninteresting, which is confusing, especially considering the fact that Sheeran obviously has experience using a guitar. This song is almost a perfect ending to the album in a way, as it leaves us more confused and disappointed than we ever could have imagined when we started the record 50 long minutes ago.
TLDR: This album kind of sucks. It has a couple of interesting moments and throwbacks to some of Sheeran’s earlier work, but the majority of the album is completely braindead and bovine. This album, above all else, is forgettable. In two or three months, we won’t be looking back on any songs on this record as they will have faded into the vast mist of bland, flavorless pop music that will never be heard again. This is one of those albums that I cannot recommend to anybody. If you like Ed Sheeran, you only get to hear a single song that reminds you of his earlier work. And even if you like this style of pop music, you have to deal with the unbearable rapping that Sheeran brings to the table throughout the record. While there are moments when the music becomes passable, it never impresses or brings anything new to the table. Skip this one, please.
BEST SONGS: Parts of “Take Me Back To London”, “Best Part Of Me”
WORST SONGS: “South Of The Border”, “Remember The Name”, “Feels”, “Way To Break My Heart”, “BLOW”
Score: 2/10
