Ed’s wet and wild night
The sun had set, the sky had gone dark and the rain continued to lightly fall as the redhead singer bounded centrestage.
His heartwarming grin lighting up Auckland’s Mt Smart Stadium, he wasted no time on words, striding straight into Castle on the Hill, strumming his guitar with gusto.
“I hope you know the words otherwise it might be a long two hours,” he said.
Sheeran certainly encouraged his audience to sing and dance and there’s something to be said about a stadium of people’s voices swelling in unison, as they did with his hit song,
Dive, 20 minutes into the show. But the crowds were equally content to simply listen to his voice fill the stadium for some of his more mellow songs.
The British singer, armed with just his voice and guitar, captured the crowd, as he launched into his twohour playlist with only a few colourful projections at his back.
A-team, a particularly soulful song, got the crowd feeling the tunes as Sheeran got everyone to turn on their phone torches, filling the stadium with a moving mini-light show.
Sheeran was welcomed to the stadium earlier with a rousing powhiri — his first. Twenty-five people from different iwi greeted the star.
A smiling Sheeran gave the group a signed album: “Here’s this, I don’t know if you want it or not,” he said.
Last night was the first of six stadium shows in New Zealand.