The news follows a record-breaking week in which Sheeran has confirmed the name of the album, which will be ‘÷’ (pronounced ‘Division’), as well as its track list and has even shared two of those tracks, ‘Shape Of You’ and ‘Castle On The Hill’, which you can read more about here. The record breaking aspect of the week came with the release of these tracks, which achieved unprecedented streaming success; ‘Shape Of You’ was streamed 7.9m times in the first 24 hours of its release at 5am on Friday. This wrenched the record for most streams in a day away from Adele’s Hello; and the two tracks together raked in more than 13m streams, earning Sheeran another record at the expense of fellow Brits One Direction.

As for the tracklist of the album, Sheeran shared a photo of a series of strips of paper arranged on what looked like a retro school desk, seemingly revealing the tracklist for ÷. We’ve put together a typed version just in case you’ve been struggling with Ed’s beautiful handwriting.

• Eraser
• Castle On The Hill
• Dive
• Shape Of You
• Perfect
• Galway Girl
• Happier
• Hearts Don’t Break Around Here
• New Man
• What Do I Know?
• How Would You Feel (Paean)
• Supermarket Flowers

The album will be Sheeran’s third, following his 2011 debut + (Plus) and 2014’s follow-up X (Multiply). Sheeran has appeared on a number of radio stations and shows this week to announce various bits of news and showcase his new tracks. Yesterday he appeared on the Capital FM Evening Show and played his own rendition of Will Smith’s theme song for ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air’, which you can check out below:

There is currently no official news on Sheeran’s live activities for 2017. However, the Metro reports that book makers have suspended betting on the possibility that Sheeran will headline Glastonbury this year, having previously appeared at the festival in both 2011 and 2014. As well as breaking records for streaming, Sheeran has also made history in the live arena; becoming the first act to headline Wembley without a band in his three sold-out shows at the venue. When we have any more information, MxdwnUK will, of course, keep you up to date.

You’d only have caught it at the time if you’d been up with the birds though, as Ed posted the tracks even slightly before the promised 5am release time. Sheeran announced the news on Instagram, writing, ‘Cause I’ve been away for a bit here’s two singles rather than one.’ He added, ‘Hello 2017! I’ve been working hard on the new material and I hope you can be as excited about it as I am. I really wanted to show two different sides to my music that I’m equally as passionate about and I just knew I wanted to roll with two songs at the same time. I’m absolutely buzzing to be back.’

‘Shape of You’ is not exactly typical Sheeran, although perhaps it does represent a progression from the stripped down acoustics of ‘Plus’, via the more produced and pop-y ‘Multiply’, to the synthesised sounds of this track. His label, Atlantic’s, view on the track is that it ‘dismantles and rebuilds modern pop music using little more than a loop pedal.’ You can check out the track below:

For Castle on the Hill, which you can listen to below, Sheeran enlisted some writing help from Benny Blanco, the Virginian rapper who has previously worked with Sheeran on his smash hit ‘Don’t’, while ‘Shape of You’ was written by Johnny McDaid, the Northern Irishman previously of Vega4 who has previously worked with Example to co-write ‘Say Nothing.’

To honour the release of the tracks, Ed co-hosted the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Scott Mills, and ended up revealing quite a bit about the process that finally lead to the tracks being released to the public at 5.30am this morning. He said that actually, there were quite a few people out there in the world who’ve heard the tracks before thanks to impromptu performances; ‘The funny thing is while I have music waiting to be released I usually end up playing it to random people. Normally when I’ve been out drinking I’ll be like, ‘Hey mate do you want to hear my new song?’ that happens a lot!’ Sheeran also revealed that he had initially written ‘Shape Of You’ with the intention of offering Rihanna the chance to sing it. Eventually, however, he decided against it, admitting, ‘I was singing some of the lyrics and was like Rihanna is not going to sing these words so kept it to myself.’

Ed was photographed recording the video for Castle On The Hill in Suffolk last year, a county which he adores, describing the track as ‘a love song’ for the place he calls home. The video also features a sixteen-year old lookalike sporting a fine crop of Ed’s trademark ginger hair, whom Ed enlisted for the task. ‘The main guy who looks just like me is weirdly from my sixth form.’