Ed Sheeran Shares Next 5 Album Titles and Reveals Plans to Retire After 10th

The next five Ed Sheeran albums are already have a title.

In a new interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the English singer-songwriter revealed the titles of his next five albums — and similarly to his series of projects inspired by mathematics— they're all related to one another.

Sheeran announced his next album will be called "Play" and explained, "When I was like 18, I had an idea for like 10 albums. It’s Plus, Multiply, Divide, Subtract, Equals, and then Play, Pause, Fast Forward, Rewind and Stop."

The new slate of projects was inspired by the "Thinking Out Loud" performer's Quentin Tarantino fandom. "I wanted to do 10. I’m kind of a bit obsessed with Tarantino, and I heard he was doing 10 films, and he’s got his side projects like Grindhouse and s---," he added.

"So, I wanna do my 10 and then every now and then do a side project," Sheeran continued, who's released 2019's No. 6 Collaborations Project and 2023's Autumn Variations in addition to his mathematic series.

The Grammy winner also opened up about the album he's creating to be released posthumously, which he first spoke about with Rolling Stone in 2023.

Sheeran told Fallon, "I kind of want to make an album for the whole of my life where you put different songs on and then it’s in your will that it comes out the day you die, and it’s called Eject."

"Imagine if when [Paul] McCartney passes away and there’s a record that he’s made that has a song from he’s 16, there’s a song from when he’s 20, there’s a song from when he’s 30," detailed the "Shivers" artist. "It’d be fascinating."

He noted, "There’ll be lots of people who are like, ‘Still, from the grave he’s f---ing with us.'"

Sheeran has been teasing an upcoming single called "Azizam" from "Play". 

He also spoke about another song titled "Old Phone," inspired by an element of his experience getting sued for alleged copyright infringement over his 2014 single “Thinking Out Loud.” [He won the lawsuit.]

The "Perfect" musician noted he ditched his phone in 2015 in favor of a tablet just for email, but he was required to open the device and “go through all the Voice Notes and the pictures and all that stuff for the lawyers.”

“I switched it on, and it was like going into a time machine. The first text was my friend that had passed away the year before, the second text was an argument with an ex-girlfriend, the third text was a family member I hadn’t spoken to in 10 years, the fourth text was another mate that died," Sheeran said. "It really, really spun me out."