Ed Sheeran has come back to the music scene with a new single, ‘Azizam’. The music video is out on YouTube, and this serves as the lead single from his upcoming album.
After releasing two quiet and very intimate albums, Ed Sheeran is back to his roots, playful pop music. His new bright pop song called ‘Azizam’ mixed sounds of the Middle East, especially Iranian culture and musical notes. The song is inspired by producer IllyaSalmanzadeh’s Persian background. The title ‘Azizam’ means “my darling” or “my dear” in Farsi. The song features unique instruments like the ghatam, which is a clay pot used for percussion in South India. It also features the traditional Iranian instrument, the santur, which is played by striking strings with small hammers.
“Now the song’s finished, and it’s out, I’m discovering more and more every single day that Persians are really, really proud of their culture, and it’s great to celebrate it,” the musician said in an interview with BBC Radio 1. Sheeran’s song still follows his usual pop style, but the Persian touches have definitely helped it become more popular in the Middle East, which has the world’s fastest-growing music market. The video for the single on YouTube has already garnered more than 10 million views in just 6 days. Moreover, the comment sections in filled with positive feedback from his listeners, especially Iranian listeners, thanking him for the global representation of their music and culture.
However, the critics are divided when it comes to reviewing the single. Some of them praised Sheeran for the Iranian representation, while some of them criticized the lack of originality in Sheeran’s music. One of the prominent critics on TikTok goes by the username The Swiftologist has managed to attack Sheeranon the open platform and elicited a response from the artist as well. “‘Shivers,’ ‘Bad Habits’ and ‘Shape of You’ are all the same song [as ‘Azizam’], and they’re all so f—ing annoying,” he said on the video blasting Sheeran’s latest release. “There has been no evolution from 2016. I feel like I’m going crazy … I’ll never get these two minutes of my life back,” he continued.
He also criticized the songwriting style of the four-time Grammy winner as a whole in his TikTok video. “The songs are good in the way that, I don’t know, heroin is good for people,” he’d added. “It’s addictive in a way that is not supposed to be good for the human brain. The way that he writes songs with the specific intention for them to be hits, he is soulless.” This gained a lot of attention from TikTok audiences with many of them agreeing with his point of view. It also managed to gain attention from the singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran himself as he replied with “lol”. The user then offered a reply to this comment saying, “King I’m so sorry. But we need to come up with something else.”
While the critics are targeting Sheeran for the lack of authenticity in his new musical release, Farsi-speaking fans are excited. So many of them are calling it “the best Nowruz gift” from an international star. One of them long-time Persian fan of Sheeran, said, “After 11 years following Ed, I never imagined waking up to his voice saying ‘Azizam’ on Nowruz [Persian New Year]. You gave us the gift of feeling seen.”
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