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Jul 12, 2019Sheeran has delivered a solid commercial showcase of the power of contemporary pop music brands. It is a case of Superstars Assemble. A fan base shared is a fan base multiplied.
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Jul 12, 2019Unsurprisingly, the end result sounds not unlike a Top 20 rundown or Spotify’s Hot Hits UK playlist. That should give you an idea of whether you’ll like it. ... Sheeran succeeds in pulling off his patent trick of simultaneously stunning you with the pitiless commercial efficiency of his writing while retaining a certain ordinary-bloke humanity.
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Jul 15, 2019Overall, No 6 Collaborations Project is an eclectic mix of songs, some familiar, some forgotten after the first listen and some deeply impactful.
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Jul 12, 2019In its herculean embrace of teamwork, it suffers uniformly from the same flaw that infects nearly every other recent one-off that embraces the F-word in its credits: There’s no real trading off, and never for a moment do you imagine any of these people were in the same room. With such an impressive friends list, you hope for at least the illusion of chemistry somewhere along the way, but it’s the ultimate Dropbox duets album.
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Jul 22, 2019A cynic would call this hotchpotch of genres and guests a laser-guided exercise in streaming monopoly, a credibility-by-osmosis playlist primed for summer dominance. And that person would be 100% correct.
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Jul 18, 2019Its glassy, placid groove isn't a reflection of his blandness, but how Sheeran knows that this is the sound that defines global pop in 2019.
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Jul 17, 2019No one is quite as adept amid a range of styles as Sheeran. ... But right near the top of this album, he stretches too thin. On “South of the Border,” which features Camila Cabello and Cardi B, Sheeran dips into a little Spanish, as has become de rigueur, and leans into the tired trope that going “south of the border” is where real freedom reigns. ... But even though this record presents countless opportunities for Sheeran to fumble, there is something to be said for his choice to release it at all.
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Jul 16, 2019Sheeran’s unobtrusively sweet voice easily slips between genres, but he struggles to connect with many of his A-list guest artists, deepening the album’s isolated mood.
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Jul 12, 2019It’s less an album, more a collection of savvy and generally savvy collaborations which blurs traditional genre boundaries unselfconsciously and acknowledges that Latin-pop is the sound of the near-future. Most of the time, it’s a credit to Sheeran’s songwriting skills and well-honed persona.
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Jul 16, 2019Few releases have been as baldly transparent and destined for ubiquity as No.6, which has all the conspicuous mining of a Drake album, but very little of the finesse or cultural fluency.
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Jul 19, 2019While there are plenty of people who are able to seamlessly blend their preferred musical genre with Hip Hop (Machine Gun Kelly, Travis Barker, Billy Ray Cyrus), Ed Sheeran isn’t one of them. And because he spent the whole album trying too hard, it falls flat, overall.
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Jul 12, 2019Though his fare is bland, it is sincere and hygienically prepared. No thrills, but all affable, affordable, family-friendly fills.
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Jul 18, 2019Too often here, Sheeran feels like a supporting player, especially when he strays from his wheelhouse. For instance, if the singer wants to lean into rapping more, he’s not likely to benefit from doing so on the same track as Chance. And when Sheeran trots out his bad-boy routine, his music feels ersatz. It’s playacting of the worst kind.
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Jul 19, 2019On this record, he’s taking a stab at, well, every genre. It doesn’t pay off, though, because this effort results in a sense of emptiness, an abyss of authenticity or real feeling. And that’s the problem: Despite writing “emotional” ballads for a huge part of his career, none of us really have any idea who Ed Sheeran is.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 92 out of 246
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Mixed: 54 out of 246
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Negative: 100 out of 246
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Jul 14, 2019
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Jul 12, 2019
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Jul 13, 2019