Less than 12 hours after dropping two new songs, Ed Sheeran’s Shape Of You and Castle On The Hill have already amassed over one million views apiece on YouTube and currently sit at No.1 and No.2 respectively on the UK iTunes chart.
In what is already being hailed as the biggest pop return of the year, Ed Sheeran release both songs at 5am this morning, available immediately on Spotify, Apple Music, iTunes and YouTube in the form of official lyric videos.
While Shape Of You is currently ahead of Castle On The Hill on the iTunes Chart, it is actually the latter that has proved more popular on YouTube. So far, Castle On The Hill has racked up 1,579,606 views, while Shape Of You is slightly behind on 1,473,111 views.
Speaking about his return to music, Sheeran said: “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.”
In addition to dropping two new tracks, Sheeran co-hosted the Radio 1 Breakfast Show with Scott Mills from 7am this morning, where he performed an acoustic version of Castle On The Hill, which you can watch below.
Despite taking a year off from releasing music and touring, Sheeran penned two of 2016’s biggest tracks – Major Lazer’s Cold Water and Justin Bieber’s Love Yourself.
While details of Sheeran’s new album have yet to be revealed, it’s safe to assume his next record will be one of the year’s biggest releases. His 2011 debut + has gone seven times platinum and has so far racked up sales of 2,126,781, while 2014 follow-up X is nine times platinum on sales of 2,898,433. Both albums reached the top of the UK chart.
