At the stroke of midnight, Ed Sheeran dropped “Eyes Closed,” the lead single off of his upcoming new album  –  [pronounced Subtract], along with the music video.

“This song, says Sheeran, “is about losing someone, feeling like every time you go out and you expect to just bump into them, and everything just reminds you of them and the things you did together. You sorta have to take yourself out of reality sometimes to numb the pain of loss, but certain things just bring you right back into it.”

“Just dancing with my eyes closed / ‘Coz everywhere I look I still see you / Time is moving so slow
And I don’t know what else that I can do / So I’ll keep dancing with my eyes closed,” he sings in the chorus.

The “Eyes Closed” video shows the 34-year-old singer/songwriter standing next to his imaginary friend — a blue furry creature — which, according to Sheeran, “was inspired by movies like Harvey, where the main character has an imaginary friend who’s a giant rabbit that no one can see.”

“There’s also a book I read my daughters where sadness is encapsulated by an imaginary creature,” he continues. “Often sadness is something that follows you around, engulfing the rooms you’re in, and you can feel and see it, but no one else around you can. So I decided to create my own big blue monster for the video. He gets bigger and bigger as the video goes on, til he takes up whole rooms, and is all I can see, just like sadness.”

Subtract comes out May 5.

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