Ed Sheeran/umi

[Intro] Thank you very much, how you guys doing? Welcome to Subtract So um, the origins of this album I know I've written about it on, online but like When I finished Plus, my debut album, the next album I was gonna make was Subtract And I went in, uh, with Rick Rubin And we started recording this acoustic album And it just sort of morphed into Multiply Because I don't think I was probably ready to make an acoustic album I wanted to, you know, make, sing with Pharrell and "Thinking Out Loud" and "Photograph" and do, and do all this sort of stuff and then After that came Divide and After Divide I really wanted to make Subtract But it also morphed into Equals in the pandemic And I wanted to come out of the pandemic with "Bad Habits" and havе a song that's made people dancе and stuff So I'd been putting this record together over a decade with all my favorite acoustic songs that I'd written over the last decade And it was uh, slated to be put out this year Uh, and then at the beginning of last year I had, I probably had the darkest month of my life And it made me address lots of things and I'd met Aaron previously Everyone make some noise for mister Aaron Dessner, right over there And I'd met Aaron through Taylor Taylor had hooked me and Aaron up through email And then me and Aaron went to dinner This is like November 2021 Me and Aaron went for dinner and uh I was telling him I'm just about to put out this album Subtract But after that I would love to try something different maybe with electric guitars, blah, blah, blah And he sent me a bunch of instrumentals And I sort of had them for awhile And I was like, I will, I'll get to them eventually but you know I'm gonna put out Subtract and do all of that And then February happened And I basically wrote over all these instrumentals We got in the studio and we, and we finished it And uh, what has come out of it is actually what Subtract was always meant to be which is, which is this record Uh, so I'm gonna play it in full, all the songs and explain stories behind them This song is called "Salt Water" It's basically like, I've had, you know, ups and downs throughout my life since I was very very young And uh, you know, as I've got older and become a parent Those ups and downs, you feel more ashamed about because, you know you You hate thinking dark dark thoughts when you have children to look after But this is uh, a song which basically encapsulates all of that "what if" And it's called "Salt Water" [Verse 1] There's still so far to go and I can't feel my toes When the rain soaks through the heels and slips to the sole Well, the blades are two feet tall I wade in green, I'm movin' forward, to where? God only knows Feel the wind's harsh refrain like the clouds gripped my face Saying, "It's alright to run from all this pain" Oh, and when it's time to go with one last breath that's in my lungs I'll scream, "It's all for love" I'll scream, "It's all for love" [Chorus] Come and kiss me, salt water Oh, finally, I feel, at three or four degrees I'm free in salt water Embrace the deep and leave everything It was just a dream [Verse 2] I can feel it up ahead where the sky meets the ground And after that, there's only moving grey I'm filled up with regret With things I did or never said, just leave that well alone [Chorus] Come and kiss me, salt water Oh, finally, I feel, at three or four degrees I'm free in salt water Embrace the deep and leave everything It was just a dream [Post-Chorus] It was just a dream Is it just a dream? It was just a dream It was just a dream Was it just a dream? [Bridge] Now I'm standing on the edge, gazing into hell Or is it something else? I just can't tell And when there's nothin' left, I close my eyes and take one step And say, "Well, here it goes" I say, "Well, here it goes" [Chorus] Come and kiss me, salt water Oh, finally, I feel, at three or four degrees I'm free in salt water Embrace the deep and leave everything It was just a dream