Songfacts®:

• Ed Sheeran is a more mature and responsible man since he got married and became a father. This song, the opening track of Equals, finds him summing up his life since the mid-2010s.
• Sheeran starts the song letting us know he's embarrassed by some of his teenage behavior. Now that he's a father and successful musician, he's cut out the heavy drinking and party lifestyle because people depend on him.
• Later on, Sheeran recounts some of his negative experiences over the last few years.
  
  Low fly zone, lawsuits, and film stars
  Headline wrote the princess and the face scar
  Broken bones, break-ins, and Babylon
  
  He's talking about:
  
  Plagiarism lawsuits for his songs "Thinking Out Loud" and "Photograph."
  
  Newspaper reports that Princess Beatrice accidentally slashed him with a ceremonial sword while pretending to knight James Blunt.
  
  In October 2017, Sheeran broke his wrist and elbow in a biking accident.
• During the chorus, Sheeran sings of the peace and love he feels when holding his baby daughter Lyra in his arms. He contrasts this calmness to the fast-paced lifestyle he leads as a pop superstar, comparing the two opposite aspects of his life to "changing tides."
• Sheeran told Apple Music he set out to write a similar song to his Divide track "Eraser," but this time singing it rather than rapping. He wanted something huge that could serve as a stadium concert opener, but simultaneously small scale. "So the verse is as chaotic as it comes, it's just noise: This is what's going on my life. This is my career," he explained. "And then everything stops. It's about what happened: I became a dad and all the noise was just shut off. Nothing else mattered at that moment."
• Sheeran wrote the song with:
  
  Northern Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance. He is signed to Sheeran's Gingerbread Records.
  
  Sheeran's regular collaborator and good friend, Snow Patrol guitarist Johnny McDaid.
• Sheeran, Vance, and McDaid also produced the track along with musician Joe Rubel ("Perfect Symphony," "Best Part of Me").