KUALA LUMPUR, May 10 — It’s been hailed as his best album ever, so it’s no surprise thatEd Sheeran’s latest album Subtract has become the fastest-selling record of the year after just four days.

The singer, 32, released the album last Friday, May 5 and it went on to sell 56,071 copies by the end of Monday, May 1.

This means it has outsold the rest of the top 25 albums, which sold a combined total of 54,844 copies in that period, reported Daily Mail.

The overwhelming success of Subtract, which is the final instalment in his mathematical symbol series that began in 2014, comes on the heels of his victory in a copyright lawsuit last week.

Last Thursday, Sheeran was cleared of allegations that his 2014 hit Thinking Out Loud ripped off Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get it On at Manhattan federal court.

The copyright lawsuit was first brought in 2018 by the estate of the late Ed Townsend, who co-wrote the 1973 R&B classic with Gaye.

Speaking outside the court, Sheeran — who is worth £158 million (RM888 million) — said: "If the jury had decided this matter the other way we might as well say goodbye to the creative freedom of songwriters.”

Hours after his victory last Friday, he released his new album and said he felt ‘lighter’ now that it’s ‘in the world’ and people are connecting with it ‘on such a deep and meaningful level’.

Interestingly, it was not the album he was planning to release.

"I had to kind of get my head 'round scrapping ten years of work to replace it with, like, a month’s worth of work,” he said in an interview with CBS News.

Last year was especially challenging after his wife Cherry Seaborn was diagnosed with a tumour while pregnant, the death of his close friend Jamal Edwards and a copyright battle over his 2107 hit Shape of You.