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Voice and guitar, "One." This is how the second effort of Ed Sheeran begins, a young and talented Scottish singer-songwriter who came to prominence in 2011 after years of healthy groundwork with the album +, from which numerous successful singles were extracted, including The A Team and Gimme Love. Given the remarkable success of his first album, Sheeran was able to do things big and after almost three years from his debut work, churns out a project produced none other than by the golden goose Pharrell Williams, Rick Rubin, Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol, and Benny Blanco, producer among others of Katy Perry, Maroon 5, Bruno Mars, and One Republic. In short, people of a certain level. But let's get to the music. X is a more varied album compared to +; here the Scotsman seems to have sharpened his style, in fact, even though the backbone of the tracks remains voice and guitar (in fact the live performance of the songs is solo, guitar and voice), the arrangements are more refined compared to the previous album, there are more pianos, strings, synths, electric guitars, and rhythmic sections. At times, Sheeran lets himself go in some guitar solos, certainly brief and essential, but well-conceived and with definite emotional impact. From a musical perspective, the young Scottish talent is able to fuse and range across many different genres, from the Folk of the wonderful "I See Fire," the soundtrack of The Hobbit - The Desolation of Smaug, to the Soul-Blues of "Thinking Out Loud," passing through the Rap of "Nina" and "The Man." Pharrell contributes to sprinkle a bit of Funk here and there mixing it with Sheeran's pop and making two tracks ("Sing" and "Runaway", truly quite similar) really pleasant and with great commercial potential. Not surprisingly, the first single is the hit "Sing." There are also pop ballads with a more standard sound and songs with a more singer-songwriter approach where guitar and voice are the absolute masters. The song lyrics are well-written, neither too banal nor too complex and demanding. They talk about love, flings, heartbreaks, and drugs. In short, nothing particularly lofty but everything sounds sincere, as if every word written by Ed is the result of a life experience. And in some cases, this is even true.
Among the most interesting songs are I See Fire, a gem not present in the standard version of the album, Don't, Photograph, Afire Love, and I'm A Mess. This last one is perhaps the most successful track of all: guitar and voice dominate, and despite a rather sparse and essential arrangement, the vocal power and ability to move of the Scot come out fully.
Sheeran is a breed talent, who managed to innovate while keeping his strengths unchanged, without resting on the laurels of the (premature) success of the first work. His ability to effortlessly slide between different musical genres emerges even more clearly in this album and the ability to avoid banality while remaining essentially a commercial artist certainly makes him a couple of steps above the average. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the third album.
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