Ed Sheeran has used pizza terminology to describe the sound of his next album.

The singer-songwriter announced a UK and Ireland tour yesterday (January 6) for October and it was later confirmed that he will have released a new record by then.

Speaking to BBC Radio 1, the '+' man said that producer Rick Rubin encouraged him to think about structuring his new tracks like pizzas.

He said: "With a recording, if you view a recording as a pizza, the main part of a pizza is the base, and without the base and the tomato sauce on it, you can't build anything on that. So the base is the live performance. So you perform it live with an acoustic guitar, however you want to do it, and record that as the main track.

"And then after is when you sprinkle the cheese on, you put a bit of bass on it, you put on herbs, i.e. drums, then you put on some pepperoni if you're into that. Some songs are the margheritas, some songs are the four cheese ones; it differs."

Speaking meanwhile about Rubin's legacy in the world of music, Sheeran added: "I remember the first conversation I had with him was about how he started his career and how he was doing Beastie Boys and LL Cool J and Run DMC, and I was like 'What was the first non-hip hop record you did?' And he said 'Slayer'. And then I asked 'What was the third?' and he was like 'Red Hot Chili Peppers'. And from there, you can grasp that he knows what he's talking about, so when he started talking about pizzas, I kind of listened."