Eyes Closed

The VII chord (A major) at the end of each four-bar unit returns to Bm rather than resolving to a tonic major, leaving the loop permanently open. That harmonic incompleteness matches the lyric's premise — you can close your eyes but the person is never actually there. Dessner's sparse guitar layers and Moose's strings fill the space that conventional chord resolution would normally occupy.

Ed Sheeran wrote 'Eyes Closed' while processing two simultaneous personal crises: the sudden death of his close friend and mentor Jamal Edwards in February 2022, and his wife Cherry Seaborn's cancer diagnosis, which arrived around the same time. The central conceit — closing your eyes at a party or in a bar to pretend a lost person is still standing next to you — became the emotional anchor of the Subtract album. Sheeran described the record as an unfiltered journal of that period, and this song as one of its most direct confessions.

Released as the lead single from '−' (Subtract) in March 2023, 'Eyes Closed' found Ed Sheeran working through two overlapping personal crises — the death of his close friend Jamal Edwards and his wife Cherry Seaborn's cancer diagnosis — with a production team anchored by Aaron Dessner and Fred again.. Stripped of the polished sheen of earlier Sheeran singles, the track leans into sparse folk-leaning textures and string arrangements by Rob Moose, signaling an album built from raw grief rather than radio calculation.