Most of the world met Ed Sheeran through stadium crowds, catchy hooks, and songs about rainy nights and quiet love. But the chapter he’s written in the past few years is the one that doesn’t come with a chorus you can sing along to. It’s a chapter built from phone calls nobody wants to answer, from hospital corridors and late‑night court sessions, and from the quiet, terrifying moment when you realize the person who is your entire song might be slipping away.

Speaking on the Friends Keep Secrets podcast with Benny Blanco, Lil Dicky, and Kristin Batalucco, the 35‑year‑old, Grammy‑winning singer laid that chapter out with a raw simplicity that feels closer to one of his stripped‑back acoustic tracks than a carefully edited interview. The moment he came back to over and over was February 2022—the day his wife, Cherry Seaborn, called him and said four words that flipped the script on his life: “I have cancer.”

“That was probably one of the worst days,” Sheeran said. “That was probably the worst week, because Jamal died that week as well, and then we went straight into the court case. And then Shane died — the first day of the court case.”

It’s a sentence that feels like a punchline from a tragedy film, except that it’s not a story he’s telling for effect. Jamal Edwards, the visionary music entrepreneur who helped launch Sheeran’s career, had passed away at 31 from a heart attack, leaving a hole in the community that felt heavier than the fame he’d helped create. Around the same time, the high‑profile plagiarism case over “Shape of You” was reaching its peak, pulling Sheeran into a courtroom battle that had been brewing for years.

And on top of it all, Cherry had been diagnosed with a cancerous tumor while six months pregnant with their second daughter, Jupiter. The doctors’ recommendation made the timeline feel like a slow, cruel joke: the surgery couldn’t be done until after the baby was born. So they spent the final stretch of the pregnancy carrying the weight of love, hope, and fear all at once.

When asked how she’s doing now, Sheeran’s voice brightens, though it still holds the mark of that chapter. “She’s fine, I mean, she had the operation,” he said. “She was pregnant at the time, so that’s why it was difficult. She had the operation to remove the tumor after the birth of our second child. Thankfully, touch wood, totally fine.”

There’s a pause in that line that’s as important as the words themselves—less triumph, more relief. The kind of relief that doesn’t make the fear evaporate, but finally lets you breathe again.

Talking about that period, he doesn’t sugarcoat it. “It was f**king scary,” he said, echoing the same phrase he’s used in past interviews. The fear of losing Cherry, the grief over Jamal, the stress of the court case, and the sudden death of cricket legend Shane Warne in the middle of the trial all collapsed into one “worst week” of his life, the kind of week that reshapes the way you see the world, even when the world still thinks you’re at the top of it.

The couple’s bond, though, has remained steady. Ed and Cherry met at school when they were just 11, reconnected as adults, and married in December 2018. They now share two daughters, Lyra and Jupiter, who’ve become the heartbeat of his songs, part of the story that makes him keep writing even when the weight of the world feels unbearable.

Those same experiences—Cherry’s diagnosis, the loss of Jamal, the emotional toll of the trial—also reshaped the course of his music. His 2023 album – (Subtract) emerged from the wreckage of that time, a departure from the polished, chart‑ready arrangements of his earlier work and a move toward something quieter, rawer, and more honest. Where previous albums felt like they’d been written for the stadium, much of Subtract feels like it was written for the bedroom, the hospital, and the kitchen table.

In the months since that interview, Ed has continued to share glimpses of what it’s like to live on the other side of that “worst week.” Cherry is now on the other side of her cancer journey, and the family has found a new kind of routine: more private, more intentional, and more focused on the moments that matter. For fans, the songs that came out of that period—some of the most emotionally direct of his career—have become the soundtrack to their own grief, hope, and healing.

And that’s perhaps the quiet miracle in all of it: the same man who wrote “Thinking Out Loud” for his wedding has learned to write songs that hold space for the questions he can’t answer. The album, the interviews, the late‑night podcast reveals—they’re not just about pain, they’re about how love, art, and time can slowly turn the worst days into the stuff of songs that will outlive the headlines.

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