Ed Sheeran's Azizam is banal, featherweight musical Esperanto – and it will be huge

Telegraph

03-04-2025

Well, Ed Sheeran's stint as a serious singer-songwriter didn't last very long. The title of the acoustic guitar-wielding superstar's comeback single, Azizam, is apparently Persian for 'my dear' or 'my beloved' but in global pop terms is effectively just some disembodied vowels and consonants to hook a basic, repetitive, relentlessly jolly four chord structure around, in the joyously vacuous tradition of Little Richard's Tutti Frutti or Lady Gaga's 'Rah rah ah-ah-ah! / Ro mah ro-mah-mah' from Bad Romance.
The world's most popular one-man band released two albums in 2023 dealing with anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, health worries, parenthood, grief, loss and the balm of simple, enduring domestic love. Apparently marking the end of Sheeran's self-branded 'mathematics' phase (a series of albums titled with the symbols +, x, ÷, and =), his May 2023 album Subtract (stylised as -) seemed to suggest a toning down of his imperial pop ambitions to focus on songcraft in a more idealistic form. Its atmospheric and almost subdued August follow-up, Autumn Variations, felt like a palate cleanser, made quickly and put out on his own Gingerbread Man indie label. It may have been the poorest-performing album of Sheeran's career but it was still one of the biggest-selling albums of the year. Clearly, if he chose to follow this more rarefied artistic path, he wasn't going to starve.
Yet just over a year on, it is apparently back to chart business as usual. Having renewed his major label deal with Warner Records, Azizam is the first single of the next phase of Sheeran's carefully planned and branded career, with a new album, titled Play, coming in Autumn. And he really isn't leaving his commercial priorities in doubt. Azizam is a slice of pure pop froth that couldn't be any more generic and upbeat if it was written by an AI programme from the prompt 'universal dance pop earworm with happy global vibes.'
Alright, maybe a bit more work went into that than that. Honestly, I'm not denigrating Sheeran's skills as a hitmaker. If everyone could write surefire worldwide billion-streaming smash hits maybe they would. But for all its infectiously up-tempo rhythm, sweetly phrased singing, sleek bouncy bass and a cute interplay between zesty acoustic guitars and a high, twisty, electronically treated, vaguely eastern earworm hook, it is so vapid, lightweight and enthusiastically banal my brain just bounces off it.
'Azizam / Meet me on the floor tonight,' the multi-tracked Sheeran sings in his most smoothly fluid pop soul mode, like a mass troupe of Irish folk singers impersonating Michael Jackson. 'Show me how to move like the water / In between the dark tonight / Be minе, be mine, Azizam!' I get images in my mind of Sheeran on the dance floor at an Arabic-themed wedding in a marquee decorated to look like a Bedouin city but probably located in a field in Suffolk, all his mates spinning round chanting 'Aaaah-shazam' as if to the Persian tongue born.
The song rises and falls in terms of dynamics without actually changing much from start to finish, four chords circling incessantly around the same hook, clocking in at a streaming-friendly two minutes and 42 seconds. In the first verse (musically almost indistinguishable from the chorus) he concocts a vaguely airborne cosmic metaphor: 'I -aye – wanna be born into space / I wanna be tangled and wrapped in your cloud'. But then he completes it with 'Aye – I wanna be close to your face,' presumably because face rhymes with space. Has anyone ever said that to the object of their desire, ever in the history of mankind? 'I wanna be close to your face, darling.' 'That's lovely, Ed, cos, you know, wherever I go, my face goes with me. Now pop the kettle on will you? I'll keep my face nice and warm for you.'
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At least four producers and songwriters appear to have worked on this featherweight confection, which is astonishing when you consider how little there is to it. They include Savan Kotecha (who has worked with Arianna Grande, The Weeknd and One Direction) and Sheeran's regular writing partner Johnny McDaid from Snow Patrol. But the main inspiration has been a Swedish producer of Iranian descent, Ilya Salmanzadeh (Ariana Grande, Charlie XCX, Sam Smith), who Sheeran credits with suggesting 'making music inspired by his Persian heritage and culture.' That would explain the twisty hook (possibly emulating a three-stringed setar), which sounds about as authentically ethnic as something heard in the background of a bazaar scene in an Indiana Jones movie.
Sheeran has gone on to rave about how it 'opened a door to a completely new and exciting world. I loved how a lot of rhythms, scales, melodies and instruments were different but similar to the Irish trad music I had grown up with.' Apparently, this brought home how much 'music connects us all and really is a universal language.' Well, yeah. But is that any excuse to boil it down to such a banal pop essence and deliver it in the mode of musical Esperanto?
Azizam is a pop dance song, lighter than candy floss and twice as sticky. Honestly, I think Sheeran is capable of better, but I doubt his record company concur. It will be number one on every Spotify playlist by tomorrow, inescapable all Spring and summer, and the next time you ask me, I'll probably declare it a bubblegum classic. Azizam!