Ed Sheeran reflects on the tenth anniversary of the album ‘X’

Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation

It’s been ten years since Ed Sheeran unveiled his hugely successful second album, Xwhich gave fans lasting hits including ‘Thinking Out Loud’, ‘Don’t’ and ‘Sing’.

“I don’t think you really realize what’s happening at that moment,” he says Billboard from his 2014 Billboard 200 chart-topping album on the red carpet of the 2024 Blue Diamond Gala on Thursday (May 2), where he headlined the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation charity event. “You go from one song to the next song to the next song. At the time I was just happy that people liked the songs and now I look back on the album, and it’s an album that people really liked, which I think is good. It took me from arenas to stadiums and I feel like it was such an important album in my career.

Shockingly, he had to warm up for one of the album’s biggest hits. “I remember that on ‘Photograph’ it took a very long time to get the production right. It seems like a long time,” he recalls. “That was the song I didn’t really like at first because we spent so much time on it and it ruined it. Now I can look back and enjoy the process.”

Since X, Sheeran hasn’t slowed down one bit. He completed his mathematical comparison of albums with those of 2017 ÷2021 = and 2023 –as well as his 2019 collaborative album No. 6 Collaboration project and his most recent release, Autumn variations. “It’s important never to do the same thing twice,” he says about keeping his career exciting after all this time. “Musically, I always think, ‘Have I said this before? Has any song sounded like this before?’ It’s less about what other people are doing and more about what I’ve already done and am constantly doing something different.”

The star is about to fall x (10th anniversary edition) On June 21, an expanded version of the original will be released with twelve songs, with nine bonus tracks, none of which have ever been available on vinyl before.