How Elgar inspired Ed Sheeran to compose his sweetest melodies yet

How Elgar inspired Ed Sheeran to compose his sweetest melodies yet: ADRIAN THRILLS reviews Autumn Variations

Ed Sheeran: Autumn Variations

Verdict: Mellow and Fruitful 

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When Ed Sheeran released his last album in May, he admitted he was ‘jumping off the cliff’ by shunning singalong, radio-friendly earworms in favour of songs with bolder arrangements and greater emotional heft.

After a tip from his pal Taylor Swift, he hooked up with new producer Aaron Dessner and surprised us all with ‘—’ (Subtract).

Coming in the wake of Plus, Multiply, Divide and Equals, it was the final instalment in his sequence of mathematically titled albums, but it sounded nothing like its predecessors.

Dessner, of rock band The National, enhanced Sheeran’s acoustic strumming with shimmering electronics, piano, strings and mandolin.

‘We wrote and recorded non-stop,’ says Ed. The new record was inspired by classical composer Edward Elgar’s Enigma Variations, in which each movement was a sketch about one of Elgar’s friends; although Sheeran concedes that many of the 14 songs here were penned from his own perspective.

Ed Sheeran said he was by shunning singalong, radio-friendly earworms in favour of songs with bolder arrangements and greater emotional heft

Autumn Variations feels less raw, even if some of its songs are underpinned by heartache

It’s not all sweetness and light. ‘Silence ain’t golden, you know that it’s only blue,’ he sings on Blue

This isn’t Subtract Part Two. That was informed by hard-hitting events in Sheeran’s personal life, including the death of his best friend, Jamal Edwards, and the cancer diagnosis of his wife, Cherry, now mercifully behind her.

Autumn Variations feels less raw, even if some of its songs are underpinned by heartache.

It opens optimistically. Driven by folky guitars, Magical is a straight-up love song, while England is a poppy celebration of Ed’s homeland. ‘I find this country of mine gets a bad reputation for being cold and grey,’ run the lyrics.’ But . . . ‘there’s a peace and a quiet on this island of ours that can’t be mirrored by anywhere else’.

It’s not all sweetness and light. ‘Silence ain’t golden, you know that it’s only blue,’ he sings on Blue, while folky rap That’s On Me is more philosophical. ‘This is not the end of our lives… this is just a bump in the ride.’

Another song, Spring, is about the pandemic, with lines about working from home and being unable to catch up with friends.

But there’s a mellow brightness to the music here that echoes a more familiar Ed, with Dessner’s stripped-back arrangements prompting some of the sweetest melodies of his career. The Day I Was Born (‘another birthday alone’) has a tunefulness that harks back to the Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters of the 1970s. When Will I Be Alright is a soul-baring bluegrass ballad.

Not everything hits the spot. Page and Punchline feel laboured, despite the latter’s weighty orchestration, but this is a beautifully balanced record. It climaxes with an anthem that encapsulates Ed’s knack for expressing universal emotions.

Sung as ‘head and heels’ — but enigmatically titled Head ] Heels — the closing track is a piano-and-strings ballad one can imagine being sung back to Sheeran by thousands of fans when he plays it live.

Beverly Knight: The Fifth Chapter

Verdict: Potent Return to Pop  

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As one of the UK’s most powerful female vocalists, Beverley Knight made light work of pivoting from pop to the West End.

Since making her debut in The Bodyguard ten years ago, she has starred in Memphis The Musical, Cats and The Drifters Girl. In April, she won an Olivier Award for her portrayal of Emmeline Pankhurst in Sylvia at The Old Vic.

But success has come at a cost. In becoming big in theatreland, the Wolverhampton-born singer put her original calling on hold. She crept into the Top Ten with 2015’s covers LP Soulsville, but has otherwise concentrated on the stage. Until now . . .

Beverley Knight wanted to make her own music again, and the upshot is The Fifth Chapter, her first release in seven years

Track of the Week: Widows by Take That

Now a trio of Gary Barlow, Mark Owen and Howard Donald, Britain’s favourite man-band make a move towards Crosby, Stills & Nash on their first song in five years, ahead of their new This Life album. 

Mark Owen, Gary Barlow, and Howard Donald of Take That

Having turned 50 in March, she wanted to make her own music again, and the upshot is The Fifth Chapter, an album of dazzling versatility.

Her first release in seven years, it’s the first on which she sings songs written for her by others — a change that has broadened her stylistic range.

To the soul, country and R&B that has defined her career to date, we can now add belting disco, funky electronics and orchestral ballads, all sung with warmth and intensity: she’s a Knight with shining ardour.

The album is bookended by barnstorming disco numbers Last One On My Mind and Everything’s Gonna Be Alright, with Beverley assisted by the London Community Gospel Choir on the latter.

Kylie, Jessie Ware and Sophie Ellis-Bextor have all explored disco recently, but Knight isn’t merely following fashion. She began singing in church, and brings a distinctive gospel edge.

The yearning is strong on Nostalgia, where she complains about a DJ playing only oldies at a party before admitting to being overwhelmed by her own memories.

Bluesy ballad Cold World uses religious imagery as the basis of a pep-talk. A Little More Love, with London musician Andrew Roachford on piano, is a plea for kindness from those in power.

But there’s escapism, too, on funky Systematic Overload.

There are also two moments of musical class from Hollywood songwriter Diane Warren. The One I’m Gonna Love Is Me is an electronic dance banger.

Not Prepared For You is an orchestral ballad arranged in a similar style to Paloma Faith’s 2014 hit Only Love Can Hurt Like This (also written by Warren). Both are great examples of Knight’s ability to shift the dial.

‘My career isn’t a shiny billboard poster that gets replaced with the next star in waiting . . . it’s a novel,’ she says. Fittingly, The Fifth Chapter is a real page-turner.

• Beverley Knight starts her UK tour on October 17 at the Reading Hexagon (ticketmaster.co.uk).

Mae Muller: Sorry I’m Late (Capitol)

Verdict: Not too tardy

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Jorja Smith: Falling Or Flying (Famm)

Verdict: Back to her Midlands roots

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Mae Muller flopped spectacularly when she finished second bottom in the final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. Representing the UK, she failed to woo voters with the spicy revenge anthem I Wrote A Song. Her voice was mixed too softly and some high-tech digital staging detracted from her performance in Liverpool. Ultimately, though, it was the song that jarred with the competition’s default setting of forced jollity.

It would have been easy for the 26-year-old Londoner to wallow in self-pity on debut album Sorry I’m Late — and there are moments that could easily be applied to that unfortunate night in May. ‘I wish I was a better singer… or better than I am,’ she reflects on MTJL (Maybe That’s Just Life). ‘Hard to believe that my 20s feel like my life is over,’ she adds on piano ballad Miss America.

But Sorry I’m Late sees her bouncing back with aplomb. The abrasive edge that proved so unappetising to the Eurovision faithful should appeal to UK fans. Mae’s modern dance-pop and stripped-down ballads are sometimes generic, but she’s an engagingly honest songwriter, happy to confront her own foibles as she navigates a world of dating apps and break-ups.

Mae Muller flopped spectacularly when she finished second bottom in the final of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest

‘It’s getting boring, this stupid boy thing,’ she sings on Me, Myself & I, a pithy celebration of being a single girl. On Somebody New, she reflects:’I guess you really like her, and that I was just a fling’, laying bare her angst at seeing an ex move on with his life. That’s just what she’s doing here. Life after Eurovision? It’s not ‘nul points’ from me.

A teenage Jorja Smith began writing songs while working in the Walsall branch of Starbucks. She then found fame in London, winning two BRITs and seeing her debut album, Lost And Found, shortlisted for a Mercury Prize.

Frazzled by five years in the capital, she’s since returned to the West Midlands, and her new album Falling Or Flying has a staunch independent spirit.

Walsall isn’t a traditional hotbed of cutting-edge R&B, but local production duo DameDame* add wonderfully inventive touches to the 26-year-old’s introspective lyrics and jazzy tunes.

The album switches between confident ‘flying’ songs and more hesitant ‘falling’ ones, but the quality stays high. ‘Gotta live, gotta learn,’ she sings on Try Me, using intricate beats to address the perils of growing up in public.

Jorja Smith starts her tour at O2 Academy, Birmingham, on November 7 (gigsandtours.com).

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