ED SHEERAN - CASTLE ON THE HILL [5.15] Get you an award-winning pop singer-songwriter who can do both...

Olivia Rafferty: In my opinion, Sheeran has written one of the biggest songs of his career right here. It's Springsteen-esque in it's driving rhythm and exclamatory choruses, and taps into so many wells of nostalgia that we all have around our childhood and teenage years. In my hometown I had friends I would drive with through the countryside at 1 a.m., the boys would push too fast on the pedal so my stomach would be left several yards behind us at all times. We'd traipse through fields and over rocky river banks, vandalise golf courses, buy pizza at midnight, make out in hedges and feel absolutely untouchable. We didn't have a castle on the hill, but I know exactly what it meant to watch that sun setting over it and feel jolted with a thrill of life, not knowing where I'd end up in the future, but electrified with the prospect of writing my own path. [10]

A.J. Cohn: While I can't easily relate to anyone for whom going home isn't at least a little fraught, I found this track to be surprisingly affecting. What is genuinely moving about this is that the memories he wistfully recollects -- breaking a leg while playing with friends, drinking too much and throwing up -- are often not the most pleasant ones, suggesting that he is nostalgic not so much for the halcyon days of youth but for the full array of experiences which were formative for him. [6]

Mo Kim: I have little use for childhood nostalgia, but even I can't deny that middle eight its quiet power, as Sheeran steps back and grounds his remembrance in an acknowledgement of the struggles his young friends face as adults. It feels like a call back to reality in the midst of a song that otherwise seems blissfully unaware of the world outside its "country lanes." [5]

Scott Mildenhall: There's something viscerally annoying about the romanticisation of speeding down country lanes, but that's the least of this song's problems. "Castle on the Hill" comes over as a quite self-serving and ineffectual attempt at romanticism all round. These, overpoweringly, feel like the lyrics of someone who's spent almost his entire adult life in showbiz. There's nothing amazing about knowing someone who sells clothes, Ed. It's bad enough, as well, to attempt to use others' more personal and serious stories to provide pathos your own superstar life can't, but don't make it worse with the addition of "but" -- "but these people raised me," as if they were otherwise somehow pitiable. It's all presumably sincere -- if anything making that worse -- but he's going a long way to make it sound like it's not, and that's partly by virtue of going only a short way to rip off "Where the Streets Have No Name"; itself the only saving grace. "Freelove Freeway" this isn't. [4]

Edward Okulicz: Well, Snow Patrol aren't writing Snow Patrol songs to accompany trailers for TV shows teasing their EXPLOSIVE CLIMAXES, so Ed Sheeran has stepped into the fold. He's not terrible at it, and boy does he sing the crap out of this would-be uplifting chorus until it works. The verses are a bit bland, but in five years time, Ed could be a one-man U2 ca. "Where The Streets Have No Name." That's a compliment, honest! [6]

Alfred Soto: For listeners who were starved for Ed Sheeran's "Being Boring." Instead of murmuring his commonplace high school memories, he can't resist the ego trip: he wants listeners to know he has pondered the Big Questions. The guitars and percussion rise to meet him, as heartfelt as a Rotarian chant. [3]

Jonathan Bradley: Where "Shape of You" has a badly needed liveliness with which Ed Sheeran grapples uncertainly, "Castle on the Hill" is unassuming and plebian and fits him like an old woolly jumper. A not particularly interesting ballad, it rewrites R.E.M.'s "Nightswimming" as Nickelback's "Photograph," imbuing luminous nostalgia with details that attain specificity through blandness: these hand-rolled cigarettes and boyhood broken legs are so particular and unremarkable that they defy universality and gain an embarrassed authenticity, like a bad conversationalist conveying a personal anecdote that doesn't go anywhere. In its fond accounting of life's transformation into memory, it could be a country song, but Eric Church or Tim McGraw would tell many people's stories in their own; Sheeran barely executes autobiography. He might be a Nick Hornby character. "Castle on the Hill" is a song he wants to sing much more than I want to hear it, but I like how lived he makes it sound. I would like it so much more were I to hear it in a stadium, amidst twinkling cell phone lights and thousands of his fans who treasure the stories he tells here. [6]

Joshua Copperman: The opening lines made me think of John Darnielle's clipped, near-spoken delivery in songs like "The Legend of Chavo Guerrero." What follows is essentially a superior second draft of 7 Years, set to a U2 pastiche, with a chorus as vaguely, broadly nostalgic as Daughtry's "Home" or, worringly, Nickelback's "Photograph." The missteps here go beyond the chorus, though, especially with those lines involving not having thrown up in so long. Sheeran nonetheless gives the most passionate, powerful vocal performance of his career, even pulling off growling during the bridge pretty well. His earnestness makes the reaches for poignancy hit hard. The best example comes in the middle of the bridge; "One's brother overdosed" is a ridiculous line -- did you mention the brother earlier? where did that detail come from? -- but coupled with the ensuing swell, as well as the rest of that bridge (the most well-crafted part of the song), it doesn't matter. In fact, a lot of the lines here have the right idea; it all amounts to a pretty great second draft, but with another revision, Sheeran's words could have matched his performance and arrangement. [7]

Ramzi Awn: The authenticity behind Sheeran's voice is admirable, but an anthem needs more than transparency to succeed. While coming of age with hand-rolled cigarettes is a nice attempt at nostalgia, it sounds more pretentious than sad. And don't fuck with "Tiny Dancer." [3]

Will Adams: It's only now occurring to me that Ed Sheeran would make a great trance vocalist. [6]

Anthony Easton: Hating his voice is one thing, but this car crash of clichés, and toxic nostalgia is dully offensive. The arrogance that Sheeran has, assuming that he is the only one who has survived out of a very large community. [0]

Katie Gill: "Shape of You" wins the Ed Sheeran Singles-Off for me, mostly because this sounds like it was exclusively written to score movie trailers and exceedingly specific nostalgia references bore me to tears. Major points deducted for the jaunty way the music pipes along in the background as Sheeran sings about his friends overdosing and getting divorced, minor points deducted because food poisoning makes you vomit as well -- that's not a sign of adulthood, that just means you stayed away from the calzones. [4]

Lauren Gilbert: I want to say something cynical about how Ed Sheeran has surely mined his past enough; surely there's only so much you can write about your first kiss and your secondary school loves, only so much Nice Guy rationalization of how much you miss your exes. But this works -- it reminds me of my own rose-tinted memories, of coming home to a town that will never quite be home again, of promising old friends that of course you'll stay in touch (and never quite following through). It feels like a Polaroid of a life now lost to time; a life you don't quite regret outgrowing, but one you can still mourn. brb, going to call some old friends. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]