How to kick bad habits
British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran proves that despite singing ‘Bad Habits’, he doesn’t have many of them, writes DENNIS CHUA
IF there is an easily recognisable Mr Nice Guy of contemporary pop-rock music, many Malaysians will mention Ed Sheeran. The popular British singer-songwriter has become a household name since he shot to fame a decade ago with his first single The A Team.
Known for his short-cropped ginger hair, occasional Clark Kent spectacles and allround friendliness, the 30-year-old artiste from Yorkshire, England, is currently promoting his new single called Bad Habits.
DEBUTING AT NO.1
Released on June 25, Bad Habits comes with a creepy yet colourful music video where Sheeran plays a pink-suited, black-fingernailed urban vampire. It marks his triumphant return to No.1 in the British music charts.
The dance-oriented song has had nine million streams to date, and is Sheeran’s 10th chart-topping single.
In a recent online interview, Sheeran described Bad Habits as a dance tune about people who were aware of their unhealthy lifestyles yet refused to change their ways.
TURNING INTO VAMPIRES
“It’s the first single from my yet-to-benamed fifth album, and it focuses on how many of us refuse to shed our worst habits,” said Sheeran. “I’d liken our bad habits to dominoes falling. Every bad habit you have leads to the next one, a soon.”
From personal experience, most of his friends' bad habits came out on Friday and Saturday nights like vampires".
Vampires are Sheeran's metaphor for bad-behaving people, and feature prominently in the Bad Habits music video.
“It’s during partying times on Friday and Saturday nights where we get to see the worst of us, especially when we take one drink too many,” he said.
BREAK FROM NORM
Sheeran, who dedicates Bad Habits to his old school riends who “worked hard and partied hard ”, described his latest single as a break fr the norm.
“Peopl usually see me as a pop singer songwriter who serenades with feel good tunes.
“So this time I’ve to come up wi h a song and music video that is differ ent,” he said.
Directed by Dave Meyers, music video for Bad Habits is inspired by DC Universe films such as Joker and Suicide Squad. Sheeran also found inspiration from the 1 0s television series Buffy The Vampire Slayer and the 2013 zombie pandemic film World War Z.
It shows Sheeran as a Joker-like vam pire who emerges past from a hair alo , dancing and singing in a low-income bu of London, and hanging out with a group social misfits. It turns out that they are his fellow vam pires , all of them fly a panicky crowd, tt cking hapless victims until the sun comes out. When sunrise finally arrives, all of the vampires crumble to dust except Sheeran, who tranform into his real self, and is seen strumming a guitar on a bridge.
BIRTH OF DAUGHTER
Sheeran admitted that his worst habit was spending too much time in his studio, but since the Covid-19 pandemic began, he had done his best to "beat it".
"Since the birth of my daughter Lyra last year, I've promised my wife Cherry to spend more time with her and Lyra," he said.
"I used to work very long hours, com-ing home from the studios only at 2am, but these days I am pretty much a 9-to-5 person."
He also admitted that while the pan-demic "freaked him" a great deal, it was a blessing in disguise because it got him to stay at home and cherish his family more.
"Sometimes, bad things happen to us, but there is a silver lining behind every cloud, as the saying goes."
STRICT UPBRINGING
During the online interview, Sheeran was given a list of five questions to ascertain “how Malaysian” he was.
These questions highlighted five typical bad habits of Malaysians, namely cutting queues at supermarkets and grocery shops, saying they they were “on the way” despite not leaving their houses, wasting food, barging into lifts and stopping to see each time an accident happened.
Sheeran sportingly answered them one by one, and revealed that he was quite the “good boy” that his strict parents raised with Irish Catholic discipline.
“I could never cut queues at the supermarkets and grocers. In the United Kingdom, the press is everywhere, so I really must behave myself.
“If any of them spots me cutting queues, it gets splashed all over the tabloids, and that’s bad for me,” he said.
As for being late for appointments, Sheeran revealed that his parents, especially his father, were sticklers for punctuality.
“My father was very strict and told me to be earlier by 10 minutes. Respect the person you want to meet, don’t keep him or her waiting, he always tells me.
“However, I’m a lot more forgiving for some of my good friends are not as punctual as I am.”
LOTS OF TUPPERWARES
When asked about wasting food, Sheeran said: “I don’t waste food, my parents said don’t, so as a boy I always made sure my plate was clean after every meal.
“Whenever I cannot finish a meal, and that always happens in the United States where we are served really big portions of everything, I keep what I cannot finish today in a plastic container or Tupperware.
“In fact, I have loads of plastic containers in my house, and they all come in handy whenever we cannot finish meals.”
As for barging into lifts, Sheeran admitted that he was always the last to enter a lift.
“I’m a bit claustrophobic so I am always the last or second last person to enter a lift. I wait for everyone to get out of the lift, before I finally walk in,” he said.
ACCIDENT IN SUPERMARKET
strange incident occurred.
“It’s human nature to slow down or stop whenever you see something out of the ordinary happening.
“For me, if someone is hurt in an accident, I get down to help him or her, for that’s the right thing to do,” he said.
However, if the person was all right and did not really need help, Sheeran would just stop out of concern for his or her safety.
“I had a minor accident in a supermarket once. I accidentally dropped a bottle of spaghetti sauce from the shelf and it splattered all over the floor.
“People stopped all around me when it happened, but I told them that I was all right, and apologised to the supermarket staff for my clumsiness,” he said.
KICKING BAD HABITS
When asked how he was able to kick bad habits, Sheeran said that whenever family members or close friends pointed out his mistakes, he would take note of them and sometimes even write them down in his diary.
“We are all human and none of us is free from making mistakes or having bad habits. And since we like to make others happy, and that’s very much a part of who I am, I take note of complaints friends and family make, and I do my best to rectify them,” he said.
BEST-SELLING MUSICIAN
Sheeran’s debut album, Plus, was released in 2011 and topped the UK Albums Chart.
The following year, he won the Brit Award for Best British Male Solo Artiste and British Breakthrough Act. Sheeran’s second studio album, Multiply, was released in 2014.
It won Album Of The Year at the 2015 Brit Awards, and he received the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter Of The Year from the British Academy Of Songwriters, Composers And Authors.
A single from the album, Thinking Out Loud, earned him the 2016 Grammy Award for Song Of The Year and Best Pop Solo Performance.
Sheeran, who was praised for his role in the 2019 Beatles tribute film Yesterday, has sold more than 150 million records.