+ (Plus)

+ (Plus) is the debut studio album by Ed Sheeran, released in September 2011 on Asylum/Atlantic Records and produced by Jake Gosling. It is the album that introduced the red-haired Suffolk singer-songwriter to a mainstream audience through a combination of acoustic-guitar-based pop, beat-boxing, and melodic R&B influence drawn from Craig David and Damien Rice simultaneously. Sheeran wrote all material himself; the album's production approach, largely solo acoustic or minimal accompaniment, gave his emotional writing a directness that stood against the more elaborate production of the UK pop mainstream in 2011. 'The A Team,' 'Lego House,' and 'Drunk' were the principal singles; 'The A Team' reached number three on the UK Singles Chart and won the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 2012. + debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, where it spent four weeks at the top position, and has been certified nine-times platinum in the United Kingdom; in the United States it reached number five on the Billboard 200. The album established Sheeran as the most commercially viable solo acoustic act of the early 2010s and set the creative template, personal writing, acoustic guitar, production minimalism, that would define his approach even as the production scale expanded on subsequent releases.