By Michaela Gordoni
Ed Sheeran hadn’t used a phone 10 ten years — until recently.
The last time singer turned his phone on was in 2015. When he got sued over his song, “Thinking Out Loud,” in which the judge found no wrongdoing on Sheeran’s part, he had to turn in his phone and other devices.
“In the lawsuit, they order you to give up all your old devices,” he said on an episode of THE TONIGHT SHOW. “So I handed everything in, but I haven’t used a phone. I moved to a tablet in 2015, just on email, and so I switched my phone off in 2015 and left it in a box.”
When he got it back, he “switched it on.” He said, “It was like going into a time machine. Like, the first text was my friend that had passed away the year before. The second text was an argument with an ex-girlfriend.”
“The third text was a family member I haven’t spoken to in 10 years. The fourth text was another mate that died,” he said.
The moment inspired him to write “Old Phone,” which he debuted on the show.
“I was kind of, like, scrolling down, it really spun me out,” he said. “And that day, I wrote in my notes, like, ‘I found my old phone today’ and then finished this as a song, and I ended up writing it into a song.”
“It feels like a song that should’ve been on my debut album, but also a song I couldn’t have written until I experienced real life things happening to me,” the singer said in a statement. “It makes me emotional to sing, I hope it finds some emotion in you too.”
He mentions “conversations with my dead friends” in his song. He used the song’s title for the name of a pub pop-up in Massachusetts. Guests had to bring an old phone and reveal a message or video that meant a lot to them in order to enter the pub.
“Old Phone” is on Sheeran’s upcoming album, Play. Sheeran said the album is focused on joy — a response to the “darkest” time of his life. It’s inspired by Persian and Indian music.
“I made this record all over the world, finished it in Goa, India, and had some of the most fun, explorative creative days of my life,” he shared. “It’s a real rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish, it encapsulates everything that I love about music, and the fun in it, but also where I am in life as a human, a partner, a father.”
The album comes out Sept. 12.
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