Ed Sheeran has been very quiet, in fact he has been silent of social media for 52 weeks.
After taking a break from his phone, emails and all social media to take a well deserved rest, Ed set off to travel the world and see all the things that he missed while on tour. Fast forward to New Years day 2017 and Ed has finally broken his radio silence and posted a short video to welcome in the new year.
Hello 2017... pic.twitter.com/1UyjpgoFbo
— Ed Sheeran (@edsheeran) January 1, 2017
Sheeran posted a message on his twitter account announcing that he would release new music on Friday 6th January 2017.
The video shows Ed holding a had written sign, with the announcement "New Music Coming Friday!!" as he waves to the camera.
A series of follow up posts appeared on his Twitter account, appearing to tease with lyrics from the awaited release.
Sheeran then surprised fans by releasing two new songs on Friday taken from his forthcoming third album.
Cause I’ve been away for a bit here’s two singles rather than one - Castle On The Hill & Shape Of You https://t.co/QuZMnEhS8P pic.twitter.com/VCznN8nLd4
— Ed Sheeran (@edsheeran) January 6, 2017
The new tracks Shape of You and Castle on the Hill, were streamed globally 6,868, 642 and 6,168, 395 times, smashing Spotify's Day 1 UK and global streaming record knocking One Direction from the top spot. Their hit Drag Me Down achived 4,759,698 streams back in August 2015.
The next day Ed tweeted "truly overwhelmed with the reaction to these new songs, I've never had anything like this, thank you for all your wonderful messages x"
We are looking forward to hearing the full album when it is released later in the year.
