How Ed Sheeran persevered through mourning, cancer fears, and plagiarism trials

Ed Sheeran has garnered success, recognition and respect in the music industry. But, as is often the case, people forget that global stars are also just regular people who face problems like everyone else.

When it comes to the British singer, these problems were not only extremely serious but they also kept piling up without a solution in sight. This led Ed Sheeran to go through what may have been the worst months of his life.

In 2023, his powerful and honest four-part docuseries came out, depicting his journey from a stuttering kid to one of the most famous singers in the world to having his life crumble around him.

Image: Disney Plus/Youtube

In a long Instagram post, Sheeran himself described the several dark events that he and his family faced at once in 2022.

Photo: Instagram - @teddysphotos

"Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth. My best friend Jamal, a brother to me, died suddenly," explained the singer in his post.

"And I found myself standing in court defending my integrity and career as a songwriter. I was in a spiral of fear, depression and anxiety," he continued.

Finally, some good news. In May 2022, Sheeran and his wife Cherry had their second daughter together.

Photo: @teddysphotos / Instagram

Jupiter came as a surprise to many. Faced with the news of the tumor, the couple chose to keep the pregnancy a secret, which may have even further complicated the couple's tough situation.

Doctors realized that the lump in her arm was less dire than originally thought, and after she gave birth she underwent a successful shoulder surgery and she got a clean MRI scan. Sherry said the day she got the scary diagnosis, Sheeran went to the basement and wrote seven songs in four hours.

Image: Disney Plus /Youtube

At the same time, Sheeran was mourning the death of his best friend, Jamal Edwards, who died suddenly in February 2022. He had a heart attack following drug abuse.

Photo: @teddysphotos / Instagram

Apart from being Sheeran's BFF, Jamal Edwards was been key in his career. He founded an online media platform SBTV that helped launched Sheeran's career, along with the careers of other famous UK artists.

At the same time, after a four-year wait, the trial for the plagiarism lawsuit that Sami Chokri and Ross O'Donoghue filed against Ed Sheeran for his most famous song, 'Shape of You,' finally began.

The songwriters argued that Ed Sheeran used the chorus of their song 'Oh Why,' released in 2015, in 'Shape of You.' The latter track went on to become the second most-played song in Spotify's history, only surpassed by 'Blinding Lights' by The Weeknd in late 2022.

What a terrible coincidence that the complaint was filed in 2018, but the trial was delayed until the darkest and most complicated time for Ed Sheeran. In April 2022, the judge agreed with Ed Sheeran, though. They saw no signs of plagiarism and ordered the plaintiffs to pay legal costs, which exceeded $1 million.

Then, in 2023, he stood on trial for alleged plagiarism of Marvin Gaye's song 'Let's Get It On' in his track 'Thinking Out Loud.' The heirs of the late songwriter of Marvin Gaye's famous hit, Ed Townsend, claim he took elements from the song for his own composition.

The situation was so bad, People reported, that Sheeran said he'd be "done" if he lost the case: " I'm stopping... I find it to be really insulting." In the end, it was limited to an insult, however, and Sheeran won the case.

After Sheeran won, the Gaye estate tried to appeal the ruling. However, on Sept. 20, 2023, the family withdrew their motion for appeal “with prejudice,” meaning the case can’t be refiled. Sheeran's court days were officially over!

Any money he has to spend on legal and other issues could come from his 'Mathmatics' world tour, which is currently in the US and ended in September 2023.

Photo: @teddysphotos / Instagram

Sheeran released his new album 'Subtract' on May 5, 2023, which contained a lot of the songs he had written during his dark days.

Photo: @teddysphotos / Instagram

Sheeran said he'd been working on the album for 10 years but it only came together in 2022. This album, he wrote, "is opening the trapdoor to my soul. For the first time, I'm not trying to craft an album people will like. I'm merely putting something out that's honest and true to where I am in my adult life."

Alexis Petridis of The Guardian called it "easily his best ever album", an "insular record" on which Sheeran's "crowd-pleasing excesses are nowhere to be seen." Neil McCormick of The Telegraph gave the album five out of five stars, describing it as "a fluid, emotional, anxious and atmospheric album of therapeutic self-healing

"Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade's worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts," he continued.

While Sheeran had already recorded hundreds of songs in search of the perfect acoustic album, that all went out the window with the events of 2022.

The honest letter in which Sheeran explained everything was accompanied by photos taken by Annie Leibovitz. Their sadness captures the torment that the singer has experienced these years, as well as the relevance of the change he's gone through.