Ed Sheeran Taking a "Breather" From Music After Another Record-Setting Year

Ed Sheeran is taking a well deserved break from music to "go out and see some more of the world."

On Tuesday (Dec. 24), two days after releasing a music video for his new song "Put It All on Me," Sheeran took to Instagram to announce he's taking a breather from music and social media.

“Hello all. Gonna go on another break again,” the singer wrote. “The Divide era and tour changed my life in so many ways, but now it’s all over it’s time to go out and see some more of the world.”

Sheeran continued, “I’ve been a bit non stop since 2017 so I’m just gonna take a breather to travel, write, and read. I’ll be off social media until it’s time to come back."

“To my family and friends, see ya when I see ya — and to my fans, thank you for always being amazing, I promise to be back with some new music when the time is right and I’ve lived a little more to actually have something to write about.”

Sheeran enjoyed another successful year in 2019, scoring his third No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 with his star-studded No. 6 Collaborations Project and breaking Billboard Boxscore records on his recent Divide Tour.

In addition, Spotify announced that Sheeran topped the 2010s most-streamed song rankings with “Shape of You,” which racked up over 2.3 billion total streams since the start of the decade. The singer also earned multiple entries on YouTube's most-watched videos of the decade list, and was crowned the U.K.'s top recording artist of the decade by the Official Charts Company.

This isn't the first time Sheeran has taken a break from frame. In 2015, the singer announced that he'd be cutting social media out of his life for the near future. A year later, he returned with his chart-topping third album, Divide (÷), which finished out as the most popular album of 2017, according to Nielsen Soundscan. 

This story first appeared on Billboard.com.