As ever, he sings beautifully, the enjoyable Opening flaunting both his dog-bothering falsetto and his endearingly squeaky rapping. A Little More and Don’t Look Down are breezily efficient pop.
Alarmingly, it seems that Play begins a quintet of remote control button-themed titles (Pause, Rewind, Fast-Forward and Stop to come), following his five maths albums. We all need predictability sometimes, but it isn’t what we crave from pop.
Play lacks the shock of the new, and we don’t need four more similar efforts; no more of these ballads that sound as if they haunt the meal-for-one aisle every Valentine’s Day, reeking of Lynx Africa.
Ed Sheeran. Play.
(Atlantic)
— Damien Morris The Observer
