If you have listened to the radio for even one second this week you will have noticed Ed Sheeran all over it, for he is back. This is fine, Sheeran is fine: but those of us who have seen the signs before can see what is happening here. Put your ear to the ground, pick up a handful of the dry dirt beneath you, fling it to the wind and read from it the future: we are due The Big Critical Re-evaluation of Ed Sheeran.

This last happened in 2015, with Justin Bieber, who about-faced his YouTube Donny Osmond-cum-youth-offender personal brand with three consecutive pop bangers and a really good haircut. Ed’s not doing that – he has written a “love song to Suffolk”, for God’s sake, and went on Capital FM to perform an acoustic version of the Fresh Prince theme tune – but he’s trying, and it’s still going to happen.

By the end of the year he will turn up on stage, in that same unwashed black T-shirt/single-shell necklace he has always worn, to thunderous, thunderous applause. Hipsters will love him. Legitimate adults will love him. The teenage fanbase who kept him going all along will be more than a little put out.

At the other end of the spectrum is Drake, who seems to be trying his hardest to crash into the cold, hard embrace of the ground. Drake has always been the rapper you feel has been stuffed into the most standup lockers in his time, but his Instagram dedication to Obama this week – a mashup of his and the outgoing president’s face with the caption “Big up yaself O” – really was the pinnacle of the man’s lameness. And yet, by all accounts, he is currently hooking up with JLo. So what do I know? The world works in mysterious ways.

It appears 2017 could well be the year of the exceptionally uncool man.