According to Sheeran, his label, Atlantic, would prefer the album to come out next September, before the Grammy cutoff, but he’s not sure if it wouldn’t be better to wait a month. “Adele is releasing her album in the same Grammy category,” he says with a little awed laugh. “I don’t know if I’m brave enough to go up against her.” In the run-up to the release, though, he has a seriously packed year.

the British singer-songwriter has come to rival his music-biz bestie, Taylor Swift, for global music domination. “It’s quite a weird thing for the No. 1 and No. 2 biggest-selling artists in the world to be close friends,” Sheeran says later, matter-of-factly. “I don’t think that happens a lot.”