On Air Now
Heart Breakfast with JK and Amanda Holden 6:30am - 10am
22 March 2023, 13:01 | Updated: 23 March 2023, 14:08
Ed Sheeran has opened up about the loss of his best friend, Jamal Edwards, and the devastating diagnosis his wife received while pregnant with their second child.
Ed Sheeran, 32, has shared an update on his wife's health after revealing to fans earlier this year that she had been diagnosed with a tumour while pregnant.
The Perfect, Celestial and Shape Of You hitmaker opened up to Rolling Stone, discussing his wife's health, the loss of his best friend Jamal Edwards and struggling with his mental health because of the heartbreak caused by both incidents.
Ed explained to the publication that his wife, Cherry Seaborn, was diagnosed with a tumour six months into her pregnancy with their second baby, Jupiter.
The tumour needed surgery, however, it couldn't happen until after she had given birth.
He said that there were discussions about delivering the baby early, but that she ended up carrying Jupiter to term and underwent "successful" surgery in June 2022.
Cherry's surgery happened the morning of an Ed Sheeran concert at Wembley, with the singer and songwriter reflecting: "There’s nothing you can do about it... You feel so powerless."
Just after this difficult period, Jamal Edwards – Ed Sheeran's best friend and the man who helped launch his career – suddenly died.
"My best friend died", Ed told Rolling Stone: “And he shouldn’t have done.”
Ed says he entered into a bout of depression following Jamal's death, saying: "I’ve always had real lows in my life, but it wasn’t really until last year that I actually addressed it."
The star reveals in the interview that in early March 2022, following the death of another friend, Shane Warne, he started to experience suicidal thoughts.
“I felt like I didn’t want to live anymore" he said: "And I have had that throughout my life.… You’re under the waves drowning. You’re just sort of in this thing. And you can’t get out of it."
He said that at the time the feelings felt "selfish" and that he was "embarrassed about it".
Watch the trailer for Ed Sheeran's Disney+ documentary here:
Ed Sheeran: The Sum Of It All official trailer
Cherry ended up encouraging Ed to seek help through a therapist after she started to figure out what was going on.
Rolling Stone write how Ed also turned to music as another form of therapy, with his latest album Subtract reflecting a lot of what he went through last year.
When Sheeran announced the new album, he shared a message on his social media which read: "I had been working on Subtract for a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art."
"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."
Subtract will be out on 5th May with the first single from the album, Eyes Closed, out on 24th March.