Ed Sheeran isn't opposed to making a death metal album
Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth is taking him up on that challenge
Music News Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran makes music for the the most vanilla people you’ve met and for tedious Uber rides. Even his horny songs like “The Shape Of You” feel about as sensual as having sex with socks on. However, it appears he is ready for a change. Sheeran, whose fans are likely not into metal, says he isn’t opposed to making a metal album.
British tabloid The Sun quoted the ginger pop star, who says he was “really into death metal as a kid” listening to bands like Cradle Of Filth, Slipknot, and “all that stuff.” (And yes, thinking those are death metal bands says a lot). He adds, “I learnt all those riffs on guitar as a kid. That’s something I’ve never thought about doing—but something I would not be opposed to creating.” We’re very doubtful that Sheeran of all people would end up dipping his feet into the metal world, but then again this is a guy who’s tried rapping multiple times. We wouldn’t put it past him to do it just for the hell of it—and even with a metal album, his music would likely be just as inescapable on the radio.
Cradle Of Filth’s Dani Filth is just as skeptical as we are. The band’s lead vocalist responded to Sheeran with an Instagram post, writing, “I’ll believe it when I see it. Fellow Suffolk lad could come good in the end. Dracula’s Castle On The Hill anyone?” But we’ll have to wait for Slipknot’s reaction. The band’s frontman Corey Taylor actually told The Guardian back in 2017 that he was “stoked for people like Ed Sheeran” because “that kid worked his ass off, so why shouldn’t he get the recognition?”
While Sheeran’s stayed in the pop lane for his latest single “Bad Habits,” he plays a ghoulish-looking vampire in its video. Perhaps that’s his way of showing he has enough bite in him to tap into an edgier side—whatever that might look like.
46 Comments
Remember when Nickleback tried being metal? Yeah, me neither.
Metal is reaching previously unimagined creative highs in a multitude of different subgenres. In my opinion, it’s running circles around rap music in terms of quality.Yep. Come at me.
Man knows how to write hits.If he wanted to write a death metal album, I wouldn’t bet against it being a hit death metal album.
How would you classify it as a hit album? If you’re looking towards the Grammy’s, they have consistently overlooked rock/metal and are largely considered a joke unless you’re a teenage girl. Michael Kiwanuka is great but he has no place being in that category. 14. Best Rock Song
A Songwriter(s) Award. Includes Rock, Hard Rock and Metal songs. A song is eligible if it was first released or if it first achieved prominence during the Eligibility Year. (Artist names appear in parentheses.) Singles or Tracks only.KYOTO
Phoebe Bridgers, Morgan Nagler & Marshall Vore, songwriters (Phoebe Bridgers)
LOST IN YESTERDAY
Kevin Parker, songwriter (Tame Impala)
NOT
Adrianne Lenker, songwriter (Big Thief)
SHAMEIKA
Fiona Apple, songwriter (Fiona Apple)
STAY HIGH – WINNER
Brittany Howard, songwriter (Brittany Howard)15. Best Rock Album
For albums containing at least 51% playing time of new rock, hard rock or metal recordings.A HERO’S DEATH
Fontaines D.C.
KIWANUKA
Michael Kiwanuka
DAYLIGHT
Grace Potter
SOUND & FURY
Sturgill Simpson
THE NEW ABNORMAL – WINNER
The Strokes
Let me know when he teams up with Alestorm and does pirate metal. 🎶 KEEHAUL THAT FILTHY LANDLUBBER, SEND HIM DOWN TO THE DEPTHS BELOW! 🎶
Man knows how to write hits.
No, Sheeran knows how to steal songs.
Why do people hate Ed Sheeran? Is it just a funny thing for people to do? I don’t understand it. I don’t own any of his albums or whatever, I’m not a “fan”, but from what I have heard, he’s a legit great song writer. He also seems to have a bit of a sense of humor about himself. Like, if he’s not your thing, that’s fine, but it feels as soon as he showed up in the public consciousness, or at least on my personal radar, it was this website’s MO to relentlessly shit on him.
Because writing shitty pop songs that appeal to the teenage masses may get you some airtime at subway, but I can almost guarantee that metal heads would rather watch him die than listen to his metal album.
I was fine with him until the faux Irish bullshit. To be fair, some of it is production. Castle on a Hill isn’t that bad in the stripped down live versions but the single is overproduced gack. But Galway Girl is a crime against humanity for several reasons.
So based on your comment I dove down a Galway Girl hole (lol). Some folks liked it (third most streamed song on Spotify at one point), some share your opinion (worst song of the year by both Time and NY Post). I listened to it myself and I have to say… I liked it? I liked the beat anyway. Not my typical fare but I bobbed my head, I can see it slaying at bars and parties. I can see some things rubbing some folks the wrong way though, specifically the appropriative aspects, Sheeran literally wrapping himself in the Irish flag at the beginning of the video, etc. I guess his dad is Irish though so maybe it’s not strictly appropriation? IDK.
His Grandad was Irish, not his Dad. And as an actual Irish person, it sounds to me like the worst plastic paddy shite imaginable. Now to be fair, a whole bunch of the credited songwriters are actually Irish. Songwriters: Johnny Mcdaid / Foy Vance / Sean Graham / Damian Mckee / Eamon Murray / Liam Bradley / Niamh Dune. But everything from the twee pop folkiness to the box ticking of the Irish references “she played the fiddle” is pure begorrah bullshit.
Not going to argue with an actual Irish person re: “Irishness” but I think his paternal grandmother was Irish as well, big Catholic family on that side, etc. I’m relying on some quick Google-fu here so could be bull. Every culture and shit, every person is different, but as a first generation American it can sometimes be weird being “not really American” but also “not really from X” and that search for belonging can manifest in cartoonish ways. You knew you grew up missing something so you fill it with how you imagine things to be in your head, and the “pure begorrah bullshit” fills in the gaps and cracks. Dang getting heavy with Galway Girl over here.
That’s a good point. And as a Northern Irish person, there are plenty of people who wouldn’t even consider me properly Irish anyway.He seems like a nice guy and the co writers are Irish, so I should probably cut him some slack. But the ceilidh band, dancing barefoot on the bar, whiskey and van morrison lyrics combined with the cheesy pop folk production just makes my teeth stand on edge.
I haven’t heard this song but your disdain for it is a thing of beauty. I grew up in a corner of the United States where everyone was zillionth generation Irish, and it never dawned on anyone that their version of “celebrating Irish culture” was a gross mix of appropriation, stereotype, and mockery.
I have now listened to the song (and immediately removed it from my YouTube history). It was much, much worse than I expected.A lot of country music in the United States has a guy sing-rapping about stereotypically “country” stuff over a big beat, and they layer in some slide guitar. The song followed that template, only it layers in Irish-y sounding instruments and the lyrics are about stereotypically Irish stuff. Anyway, I’m guessing Saoirse Ronan got paid handsomely, and seeing her play an Irish character (surprisingly rare when I think about) has me thinking about what a low-key good movie Brooklyn is. Overall, half a star for the song, two stars for the way I killed twenty minutes.
Much better title for Steve Earle.
Heh. The Steve Earle Galway Girl was the one thing that caused an argument when my wife and i were planning our wedding. It’s played to death here and I hate it, so i refused to have it on the set list or playlist. My wife has much better, cooler taste in music than me but she argued that everyone seems to love it and it gets people dancing. She was probably not wrong, but ugh.
I’d rather stick my head in a washing machine on high speed spin cycle full of hammers than ever hear “Shape of You” again, but you know what? He doesn’t need me to like it because literally thousands of times more people do like it than will like the total of everything I ever do combined, so good on him.
More to the point, did a *vegan* just seriously call *my* tastes vanilla because I like a couple of Ed’s songs? Are vegans even allowed to eat vanilla?
Yeah I don’t get it. I’m not a fan of his music but he gets a ton of hate for someone essentially making harmless pop fluff. My wife plays his tunes in the car sometimes and I don’t hate it. They’re kinda generic and bland but some of them are pretty catchy and he has a decent voice.
It is G/O Media’s MO to relentlessly shit on all sorts of people, some of whom appear to be quite nice. Case in point: Jezebel is engaged in a long-running campaign to prove that Kristen Bell is not sunny and funny and pleasant, as she might appear, but is in fact the personification of evil. This is, at its heart, a trash operation wholly focused on driving “engagement” (i.e. page views, clicks, and comments), so a garbage take like this one is quality content so long as it gets people like you and me to comment on it.
You mean KKK Princess Kristin Bell? Wait, is it another actress I’m supposed to hate? Someone has done something, maybe, and I’m quite upset, probably.
LoL yes as a Kristen Bell fan it hasn’t gone unnoticed that this website has a bizarre grudge/vendetta against her. I feel like maybe their SEO team or someone shares regular memos with the editors like “ok, we hate Jameela Jamil now, target 3 hit pieces this month”.
No, he’s a legit terrible songwriter, and whenever “Perfect” comes on the radio I honestly can’t think of a worse song that’s been written. That one duet he did with Taylor Swift was cool, but I think that’s more to do with her than him.You know what tho? Lots of decent people suck at their jobs. I, myself, have sucked at many jobs despite being fucking awesome. I think he’d be be fun to hang out with.
This shit is hilarious to me:
The music is inescapable. I live in Vietnam and used to live in Thailand and I would hear his music at least 3 times every day. It is utterly banal, weirdly offensive on occasion and extremely derivative (as demonstrated by how often he’s been sued).As for the Galway Girl thing, it points to his attitude – it’s a demographic. He writes product, not songs. Everything is focus-grouped to fuck, even if it’s just a tiny focus group in his head. He’s a salesman.
His persona, as the ex-busker who was briefly “homeless” (slept on some friends’ sofas for a while) is demonstrable bullshit, as is his whole “just a guy with a guitar” schtick. For someone who seems to trade on honesty, he’s very dishonest.
He also appeals to Tories, so fuck that guy, and James Corden so fuck him twice.
And lets just return to the music to finish. Seriously, it’s fucking awful. It is an offense to the ears and heart of people that enjoy art. He can take his demographics and fuck off.
Eh, I’ve probably heard this one song of his that gets constant rotation on the corporate radio:“Why you always in a mood,Acting like you brand-new”or some shit. I didn’t even know who it was, despite having to hear that crap 50 times every 8 hours (because DJ’s, with the exception of NPR’s DJ’s, have utterly terrible taste in music), until some kid gushed about, “I LOOOOOVE ED SHEERAN!!!”“Who?”“The guy playing on the radio right now! Haven’t you ever heard it?!”No, I tune that shit out. It’s drivel, but whatever; Sheeran’s obviously very successful, and he seems like a decent guy, but I prefer music that doesn’t sound like the taste of trying to seal a manilla folder by licking it.Nothing against the guy; pretty sure it’s just good-natured bashing the guy…kinda like how everybody shits on Guy Fieri, but he made enough money from “Rockstar” to start his own empire, and he helps struggling restaurant employees, so good on him.But if we’re going to be objective here, Sheeran seems like he writes pop bullshit; given the state of the current death metal scene, he’d probably fit right in. Most of it sounds similar and I haven’t heard any break-outs in a decade or so, but given his proclivity to cite Cradle of Filth and Slipknot as “death metal” gives me pause.Would “Earth Asunder (Whispers of a Cold Ginger Hitler)“ get rotation? Probably not. But it would certainly raise a brow with the emo kids and get some Likes on Spotify that bought into the whole, “Creed was a death metal band, but were born again and play Christian rock now!” idiots something to slobber over.My $0.02? Modern death metal is formulaic and dumb. If a rich white guy wants to step to the likes of Otep or Prayer for Cleansing, he should probably stretch those vocal cords a little bit…they ain’t gonna tear themselves!
The people who hate Ed Sheeran are those that still suffer, even if unknowingly, the grunge mainstay of punk rock guilt. I don’t like his music and he seems like rather a boring person, but I hate him about as much as I hate anyone else, which is to say not at all. Just not into it but I won’t hate on him for having what seems to me inexplicable success.
Why do people hate Ed Sheeran?
Because he steals other peoples’ songs & passes them off as his own.
from what I have heard, he’s a legit great song writer.
No.
Someone who’s had as much success as Ed will always have people shitting on them. I find his music boring and all the same, but I don’t write hate pieces about him.
“really into death metal as a kid” listening to bands like Cradle Of Filth, Slipknot, and “all that stuff.”He’s so into death metal that he cant even name two bands that identify as death metal.He is free to make a metal album just as I am free to not listen to it.
What is it about music where if an artist is known for generating rhythmic patterns in one acceptable genre it’s mind-blowing to some people that they might try generating rhythmic patterns in a different style? That seems like such a high school music nerd way of thinking.
The attempt usually isn’t the mind-blowing part, more the crappy results.
“Generating rhythmic patterns” is a pretty weird and dismissive way to describe songwriting.
It is that. On the other hand, part of being a popular musician is finding a consistent voice, and there’s some arrogance in suggesting that you can step out and write an album in a totally different style. That gets magnified when it’s a disreputable style like metal. Cradle of Filth is a very silly band, but they’ve been working on that silliness for decades.
Disreputable? That’s a strange way to put it.And saying Cradle of Filth is “silly” is a bit of a stretch; they’re Operatic Death Metal. They tell stories and make videos that could be possibly be construed as pure entertainment, but the only CoF fans I’ve met are fellow musicians who enjoy the sheer spectactle of their technical abilities. I’ve never met a metalhead who actually studies The Book of The Dead or worships C’thulu, they’re just vehicles to showcase their performance.It’s not any different than listening to Steve Vai or Ywngie Maalmsteem; they aren’t performing for listeners, they’re just showing-off their technical abilities. Sure, they could just release sheet-music and give lessons on DVD, but it’s much more entertaining when they develop a plot and make fun little videos:
I’m so glad there’s a link to Her Ghost in the Fog in this thread – it’s a tie for best song with “Thirteen Autumns and a Widow” and their cover of “Hallowed Be Thy Name.”Anyway, Ed Sheeran is a very innocuous songwriter who apparently has a lot of very, very popular songs and presumably sells merchandise that a teenager could wear to school without getting side-eyed – that’s the general idea of “reputable” that I’m working with. It’s boring. Cradle of Filth, on the other hand, is intentionally disreputable. They use Marquis de Sade quotes as their bios. They sold tshirts of Jesus groping a woman tied to a stake. They have a song called “Lord Abortion” and an album called Bitter Suites to Succubi, which is obviously silly. The disreputable silliness doesn’t detract from their musicianship or make their songs less awesome – it’s an integral part of their artistic voice. Their music is perfectly suited to songs about vampires and ghosts and Hellraiser, and they’ve spent decades honing their compositions and developing that artistic presence. Innocuous pop musicians suggesting they could make a metal record makes it seem like metal is somehow less artistically evolved. It’s arrogant. He could hire some session musicians, but I’d be stunned if Ed Sheeran could snarl a lyric about priests castrating themselves at the end of a seven-minute song. That takes a specific kind of artistic dedication.
disreputable style like metal
Why is metal disreputable?
Well, some musical genres call for years of painstaking training and practice. Otherwise you end up like Jon Benjamin, Jazz Daredevil.
I wish he wasn’t so opposed to making a good album.
Meh…he’s fine. My seven year old loves to sing that Bad Habits song on her Disney karaoke toy, therefore he’s a good artist.
Huh, I’m not opposed to making a death metal album either, I guess Ed Sheeran and I are more similar than I thought.
Do people still care about this rip-off artist?
He knows he doesn’t have to ruin every genre, right?
Corey Taylor told The Guardian back in 2017 that he was “stoked for people like Ed Sheeran” because “that kid worked his ass off, so why shouldn’t he get the recognition?”Corey Taylor remains an underratedly great dude.
The English once genocided half of the population of Ireland. HALF. And Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl is still the worst thing the English have ever done to us.