Ed Sheeran has been all over the world. The singer-songwriter—one of the best-selling musicians of all time, with multiple Grammy and BRIT Awards, an Ivor Novello, an Emmy and even an MBE for services to music—has spent the last three and a half years touring the world for his Mathematics Tour. This has taken him everywhere from Belgium, Lithuania ,and Bulgaria and Bhutan, China, and Bahrain, but touring the world doesn’t always go hand in hand with exploration—to really travel, and get under the skin of a destination. “As a touring artist, I’m not always able to soak up the places I visit,” Ed tells Condé Nast Traveler. “The older I get, I want to make sure I capture the places I’m lucky enough to visit, so I can look back on them with my kids.”
For his latest album, he tried to rectify this. When recording Play, his eighth studio album, he spent a month in India. His single, Sapphire, was created with Indian musicians as a celebration of Indian culture and heritage. He teamed up with Arijit Singh, an award-winning Indian singer and composer, and ended up releasing a reworked version of the track, featuring a verse and a chorus sung in a mix of Hindi and Punjabi.
He has previously stated that “Play was an album that was made as a direct response to the darkest period of my life. Coming out of all of that, I just wanted to create joy and technicolor, and explore cultures in the countries I was touring.”
“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. 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 older I get, the more I just want to enjoy things, and savour the moments that are mad and chaotic.”
Below, Ed let us have a rare sneak peek at footage from his personal camera, showing us behind-the-scenes photos from his time in India, each annotated with his thoughts and feelings from every destination he visited across the country.
Hyderabad’s markets and scooties
Ed Sheeran