Get Up

Ed Sheeran sings about missing his former partner and learning important life lessons in the process on “Punchline.” This track tells a story of battling to get rid of emotions for a former lover, whom he now realized might not have loved him the same way. He’s now caught between accepting that fact and learning life lessons from it and going back to beg her for another chance.

Ed Sheeran tells a story of unsuccessfully trying to feel “Amazing.” This track is about the being weighed down by emotional stress despite valiant attempts to find some positivity in the situation. This track was written by Ed Sheeran from the perspective of his friend. From the track, we see this person fall deeper into the negative thoughts and slide further down the path of mental torment with every lyric.

In the 1980s, sunglasses were a common fashion for people who wanted to adopt a "tough guy" persona (note all the cop shows from that era -- Simon & Simon, Miami Vice, etc. -- where the lead characters wore shades). So I think this song is about a guy who wears shades as a way of hiding his insecurity after learning that his girlfriend is cheating on him. He's trying to pretend that he's a "tough guy" to hide the fact that his girlfriend's affair is disturbing him.

Moyet later described how her song "Goodbye 70's" had been inspired by her disillusionment with how the late-1970s punk scene had turned out, saying, "'Goodbye 70's' is about punk and not caring how you were dressed, and then I discovered that so many of my friends that I'd thought it all really meant something to just saw it as another trend... That's what 'Goodbye 70's' was all about, about how sour the whole thing became."

The man has pseudo-friends who constantly criticize his actions. They moralize him, "teach" him and advise him to make a significant change in his life, because the way he is and what he does is not what they say it should be. They may find his life lame or immoral. They hold themselves up as role models. The man replies that he will make his own choices and decisions and he does not agree to unconditionally make himself under the influence of questionable quality advice. He justifies this by saying that there is always someone for whom he will be important, no matter what he does and no matter what he is. Although it is not said directly, I read it as meaning that he will always be important to himself in every way and he will always have his own support. "Everyone is different and maybe that's a good thing, but you exceeded that mark 1000 times" - I remember very well how sad the words I once heard (from my peers and it was in negative context) at school made me feel.