Ed Sheeran does not know if STOP will be the “retirement record”.
The 34-year-old singer released Play – his eighth studio album – last month, and it marks the start of a series of records that will end with Stop, but Ed wants to keep making records beyond that.
He is quoted by the Daily Star newspaper’s Wired column as saying: “I don’t know if STOP is the retirement record because I still want to make records.
“I feel like I have 10 big statement campaign records to do.
“If there’s a coloured cover, then that’s the statement record. And if it’s black and white, that’s a record that I just really wanted to make.”
As well as speaking about the future of his music career, Ed has also warned fellow musicians and bands, including Oasis and Sir Rod Stewart, 80, to stop using a teleprompter to remind themselves of their own song lyrics at concerts.
Asked if the Castle on the Hill hitmaker uses a teleprompter, Ed said: “No, I honestly think that’s a very slippery slope once you start having one of them.
“Anytime that I’ve had one, because sometimes you perform with people that have them, and you have the song up there, I go, ‘Oh, this is actually, it’s pretty nice. It’s quite easy.’
“And I know that the moment I get one, you’re going to lose something, and then you’re just constantly doing it.
“And I have like artist friends that like, you’ll be in a scenario, and the guitar will be passed around, and they can’t remember their biggest song because it’s always on a teleprompter.
“And I just don’t want to get to that point.”
The Shape of You performer recently admitted he felt “intensely unhappy” in the first decade of his career because Ed had “no balance” in his life as he put music over personal happiness.
In September, Ed told The Sun newspaper: “I think in the first decade of my career I was intensely unhappy as I had no balance, I was just work, work, work.
“And yes, everything was hyper-successful, but it was hyper-successful because I had no personal life at all.
“Work was everything. I think finding that balance with getting married, having a family, living around my friends…
“Being able to spend time with my friends and family — that has now become 70 per cent of my life, and work is like 30 per cent.
“Before, it was 100 per cent and zero anything else.
“The balance of getting to exist as a human being rather than just a pop star machine — that would be my measure of success.”
Ed – who has daughters Lyra, five, and three-year-old Jupiter with his wife Cherry Seaborn – now puts his family before his music career.
He said: “The stage I am at in my career is that I am really happy and settled. I am really happy with who I am as an artist, the music I am creating and the shows I am doing.
“Honestly, the biggest thing for me is being able to balance being a dad and being a husband, and to feel like I am achieving both things to a good level.”