QUEZON City, Philippines (September 9) – I bet you’ve heard his songs everywhere. He has the ability to weaken the knees of many music fans with his meaningful lyrics and impeccably skilled vocal skills from his debut song “A Team” to hitting big music top charts for his song “Thinking Out Loud”; he became the biggest selling artist in the United Kingdom.
In early 2011, Ed Sheeran released an independent extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project, which caught the attention of both Elton John and Jamie Foxx. He then signed to Asylum Records. His debut album, +, containing the singles “The A Team” and “Lego House”, was certified 6 times Platinum in the UK. In 2012, Sheeran won two Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. “The A Team” won the British Academy’s Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2014, he was nominated for Best New Artist at the 56th Annual Grammy Awards.
Ed Sheeran’s popularity abroad began in 2012. In the US he made a guest appearance on Taylor Swift’s fourth studio album, Red, and wrote songs for One Direction. “The A Team” was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards and he performed the song in duet with Elton John during the ceremony. He spent much of 2013 touring North America as the opening act for Swift’s The Red Tour. In autumn 2013, Sheeran performed three sold-out shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden as a headline act. His second studio album x (read as “multiply”) was released worldwide on 23 June 2014, charting at number one in the UK Albums Chart and the US Billboard 200. In 2015, x won the Brit Award for British Album of the Year, and was nominated for Album of the Year at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards. He received the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year in 2015. As part of his x world tour, Sheeran played three sold-out concerts at London’s Wembley Stadium in July 2015, his biggest solo shows to date.
What’s more surprising is that Ed Sheeran’s just 24 years old!
Ed Sheeran was born in February 1991 in Halifax, England. He began playing guitar at a young age and soon after started writing his own songs. When he was just a teenager, he moved to London to pursue his music, and his outpouring of creativity added up to several early EPs and hundreds of live shows. Getting a lot of attention with his online performances, Ed Sheeran hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart before he ever signed with a record label. Since signing with Atlantic, Ed Sheeran has sold millions of records and has had a song appear in the second installment of The Hobbit trilogy.
Ed Sheeran’s songs became so popular that it reached all over the world. His song, “thinking out loud” had reached number 1 in top charts!
Telegraph explains that his second album is X which means multiply, the follow-up to 2011’s + promising to increase things exponentially. Certainly in terms of content, and in likelihood in terms of commercial appeal, it all adds up. This is, in every respect, a richer blend, more seamlessly combining the factors that made him so immediately accessible first time round. The formula might be sensitive songwriting + hip-hop flow + pop sensibility x charismatic performance = something greater than the sum of its obvious parts.
But, more significantly, these are genuinely great songs, where melodies flow, rhythms groove, choruses erupt and lyrics jab you with surprises. The core of Sheeran’s appeal is his apparently effortless absorption of contemporary musical styles. He can slip smoothly through the gears from soulful balladry (One, Photograph) to edgy, rocky drama (I’m a Mess, Bloodstream) to anthemic sing-alongs (Afire Love) to twisty, poetic hip hop (The Man), sometimes all in the same song (his irresistible number one hit Sing, recorded with pop producer of the moment, Pharrell).
Throughout it all, Ed Sheeran stays true to the essential artistic notions of the classic singer-songwriter genre by treating his music as a vehicle for emotional veracity, personal revelation and universal inclusion. For older listeners struggling to connect with contemporary pop, Ed Sheeran might just be the artist with the x factor.
Ed Sheeran clearly isn’t the only artist to have ascended from the pub circuit to international stardom in recent years, although he may well be the only one who’s achieved it without really altering his approach to live performance. A brief, but rapturously received guest appearance from Elton John aside, what’s on offer is essentially what was on offer at the Bedford five years ago: the singer, an acoustic guitar and an effects pedal. Even Sheeran’s loudest detractors might be forced to agree that there’s something incredibly brave – or foolhardy to the point of lunacy – about attempting to entertain thousands of people entirely alone, without the aid of pyrotechnics, costume changes – Ed Sheeran, as ever, looks as if he’s arrived onstage fresh from sleeping on someone’s sofa – or special effects.
Because of Ed Sheeran’s sudden rise to fame because of music, I guess it will not be long before he is having sold-out world tours, having concerts all over the planet and will be seen not just thousands of music lovers but I bet it’ll be so much exponentially more.
(written by Joana Joyce Tan Marcaida, edited by Jay Paul Carlos, additional research by Lovely Ann Cruz)
