Sheeran is a walking definition of the word facile, in both its worst and its best senses. His main asset is his ability to access a seemingly bottomless reservoir of contemporary centrist melodicism and lite rhythm that vaguely recalls Elton John at his prodigious 1970s peak, albeit for a less melodically demanding era—and without a Bernie Taupin to provide more substantial words than Sheeran’s usually disposable, sometimes laughably doltish lyrics. That Sheeran looks like an orange tufted vintage teddy bear with stuffing poking out through its incongruous sleeve tattoos may make his pop heartthrob status hard to credit, but it softens the edges of his clearly relentless workaholic ambition. He’s got a grown-up version of the nonthreatening allure of a boy-band member, without the teen-star emotional damage. He has the affable familiarity of your fourth or fifth favorite member of your extended friend group, the guy who’ll make you wince when he does his white-guy-rap-freestyling schtick, but he makes up for it by low-key buying another round of ciders. Though you do keep wondering how well any of you really know him, and whether you actually like cider. Maybe he could ask you for your order next time.
— Carl Wilson, Ed Sheeran’s Collaborations Project Proves He Is the Tofu of Pop Music, Slate, July 12, 2019.