Ed Sheeran’s Divide was last year’s biggest-selling album, shifting 2.7 million copies in the UK, but the star has no immediate plans to follow it up.
“I’d like to bring out a project next year that isn’t an album,” he told BBC News.
“Something that isn’t pushed on radio. Something that’s not what I usually do, that just clears the air a little bit.”
He added he’d “happily” take a year off when his world tour ends next September before starting his fourth album.
The news may disappoint fans, but Sheeran pointed out that spending three years on tour was “weird” and he’d need time to decompress.
The star previously took a “gap year” between his second record, Multiply, and its chart-conquering successor – time he spent whitewater rafting, swimming with bull sharks (without a cage) and bungee jumping.
However, he admitted he had never stopped writing songs.
“I’ll never not make music. It’s my hobby,” he told the BBC’s Chi Chi Izundu. “I wouldn’t enjoy life if I didn’t do music.
“I don’t see music as work. I see this [speaking to the press] as work. No-one picks up a guitar hoping one day they’re going to be interviewed.”
