Rick Rubin

Lore & Background

In the mythology of Ed Sheeran's recording history, the Rubin sessions stand apart. Where Ed's earlier albums were shaped by a tight-knit circle of producers and engineers working in polished London and New York studios, the '=' sessions carried a different texture. Ed has described the experience of working with Rubin as almost confrontational in the best sense—Rubin would listen to a full arrangement and simply ask, 'What if it was just you and a guitar?' The creative tension between Ed's instinct to build and Rubin's instinct to subtract became the engine of the album's sound. Rubin's own legend in the wider music world—spanning punk, hip-hop, country, rock, and pop across four decades—gave the collaboration a gravitational pull. He is the producer who reimagined Johnny Cash's final recordings, who shaped the raw aggression of System of a Down, who sat in the room when Adele's '25' took shape. Bringing that pedigree into a pop-folk singer-songwriter's project signalled to fans that Ed was taking a creative risk, reaching outside his usual comfort zone. The Malibu setting of the sessions is itself part of the lore. Rubin is known for recording in a relatively small, acoustically treated room in his home, often to analog tape, with minimal overdubs. For Ed, accustomed to large tracking rooms and digital workflows, that environment forced a different kind of honesty into the performances. The result on '=' is an album where you can hear breath, room tone, and the slight imperfection of a take that was kept because it felt true rather than technically perfect.

In Their Own Story

The afternoon light through the Malibu window was doing that slow, honeyed thing it does in late summer. Ed sat cross-legged on the rug, acoustic guitar across his knees, staring at the single microphone Rubin had positioned two feet away. No click track. No comping. No safety net of a digital session file. 'Again,' Rubin said, not looking up from the mixing board. His voice was flat, almost bored, the way a surgeon might say 'one more stitch.'

Ed played the verse. Held the last note a beat too long. Let it ring into the room's silence until it dissolved. Rubin nodded once. 'Okay. That's the one. Don't touch it.'

And that was it. No second take. No 'let's try a different key.' The tape kept rolling, the sun crept another inch across the floor, and somewhere in the next room a dog barked at a passing car. Ed would later say that was the most he'd ever trusted a single take in his career. He'd never fully understood why, but the silence Rubin left around the note was the whole point.

Reader's Guide

In the supporting cast of Ed Sheeran's creative team, Rick Rubin plays the role of the subtractive genius—the one who walks into a room full of ideas and quietly removes most of them. His contribution to '=' was not to add sonic colour but to create the conditions for Ed to find the most honest version of a song. Where other producers in Ed's orbit might build a track layer by layer, Rubin's approach was to listen, identify the single most important element, and protect it with silence. The dynamic between the two was reportedly one of mutual respect tempered by creative friction. Ed, used to being the driving creative force in the studio, had to cede control to a man who had been shaping records since the Reagan era. Rubin, in turn, had to adapt his punk-and-soul instincts to a pop-folk songwriter whose audience expected polish. The compromise—live, warm, slightly imperfect recordings that still charted globally—became the signature of '='. A detail superfans love: Rubin is known to keep his studio deliberately small and acoustically 'dead,' discouraging the kind of big-room reverb that makes a vocal sound enormous. For Ed, that meant his voice on '=' sits closer to the listener, more vulnerable, as if he's singing in a living room rather than an arena. It's a small technical choice, but it reshapes the entire emotional register of the album. He does not tour with Ed. He does not appear on the stage. His presence is felt only in the spaces between the notes.

Did You Know?

• Rubin is famous for recording to analog tape in a small, acoustically treated home studio rather than in a large professional tracking room, a choice that gives his productions a distinctive warmth and intimacy.
• Ed Sheeran has described the Rubin sessions as the first time in his career he felt genuinely challenged to strip a song back to its barest form, a process he found both frustrating and liberating.
• Rubin's production credits span genres from punk rock to country to hip-hop to pop, making his collaboration with Ed one of the most cross-genre pairings in modern pop music.