Ed Sheeran‘s been making music long enough to know that not everyone’s going to be a fan of what he puts out — and the same goes for his new song, “Azizam.”
After one reviewer had a particularly harsh assessment of the carefree dance track, which dropped Friday (April 4), the singer-songwriter shared a hilarious, brief response before keeping it moving. The critic — a popular TikToker who shares thoughts on music and pop culture under the name The Swiftologist — had blasted “Azizam” in a recent video, calling the track “the same f–k-ng thing” as many of Sheeran’s past hits.
“‘Shivers,’ ‘Bad Habits’ and ‘Shape of You’ are all the same song [as ‘Azizam’], and they’re all so f—ing annoying,” he’d continued. “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.”
The Swiftologist, whose real name is Zachary, also criticized the four-time Grammy winner’s songwriting style as a whole in the 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.”
So, how did Sheeran react? “lol,” the musician simply wrote in the comments.
For what it’s worth, Zachary offered in response to Sheeran’s reply: “King I’m so sorry. But we need to come up with something else.”
It’s certainly not the first time someone has critiqued the British superstar’s songwriting, and with Sheeran recently announcing plans to release at least five more albums in the coming years, it won’t be the last. In March, he appeared on The Tonight Show and revealed that his next album, Play — for which “Azizam” serves as the lead single — will be followed by LPs titled Pause, Rewind, Fast-Forward and Stop.
The series mirrors the sequence of Sheeran’s first five albums, which fit a mathematics theme: + (2011), x (2014), ÷ (2017), = (2021) and – (2023). And though critics such as Zachary may not be a fan of the musician’s catalog, a lot of other people are; all five of the aforementioned LPs reached the top 5 of the Billboard 200, while nine songs spread out across those albums have charted in the Billboard Hot 100‘s top 10.
See The Swiftologist’s review of “Azizam” — and look for Sheeran’s comment — below.
