Scruffy star proves he can do more than ‘soppy love songs’
Ed Sheeran
Manchester Etihad Arena
Ed Sheeran is an anomaly on the pop landscape: an old-fashioned troubadour who has not only topped the charts but broken them. The scruffy 27-year-old had nine songs in the Top 10 at the same time in March last year. A few months later, he headlined Glastonbury with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal. Sheeran has sold more than 100 million singles, but still gives the impression of a man who you’ll find selling homemade CDS from his rucksack at the back of the venue.
In this case, the venue just happens to be a football stadium. Chatting to the crowd on the first of four sold-out nights at the Etihad Arena, Sheeran joked about an embarrassing Manchester gig much earlier in his career, when he found himself playing to an audience of just one person. At his very best, it still feels like he is, in a way that can enliven otherwise ordinary material; a strangely intimate rendition of downbeat break-up ballad Happier (his latest single) became an unexpected high point.
His energy and charisma as a live performer help to elevate even his weakest songs; his cod-irish hit Galway Girl earned a sniffy reception from some critics, but its ceilidh clichés make complete sense in the context of a live dancealong, led by the indefatigable redhead. Or take, for instance, his 2017 single Perfect, recently voted “the greatest song of all time” by listeners of Smooth FM, a station aimed at fortysomethings. On record, Perfect has always struck me as anodyne slush, but hearing Sheeran sing about “dancing in the dark” as night descended, with lighters and phones illuminating the arena, I could see why the Smooth-ites were won over. Not quite perfect, but pretty damn close.
It took a while to reach that high point. After a strong start with Castle on the Hill – a song inspired by deliciously uncool subject matter: childhood memories of an English Heritage landmark in Framlingham, Suffolk – the show descended into a mid-set lull, despite (or perhaps because of) Sheeran’s frequent pep-talks. For a while, he urged audience participation before almost every song – and not necessarily the right songs. He didn’t really succeed in convincing the crowd to “shout along” to the downbeat Dive, a song that saw higher-than-average numbers nipping off to the bar.
The lowest ebb came with a clipped and nasal cover of Feeling Good, seemingly chosen more as an excuse to show off his admittedly powerful falsetto than for its coherence in the set list.
Sheeran has been dismissed by some as an “acoustic balladeer who sings soppy love songs to teenage girls” (as he once put it himself, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph). But it’s not all soppy love songs; he closed Thursday’s show with the blistering rap of 2011’s You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, hot on the heels of Sing and its irresistible R&B funk.
Nor is it all teenage girls: men and women of all ages roared at the opening notes of Shape of You, a single that has been streamed on Youtube 3.5 billion times. If you weren’t one of those 3.5 billion clickers, this concert probably wouldn’t have made you a convert. But Sheeran’s devotees are so numerous that he doesn’t need any new ones.
“Never be anything but a singersongwriter,” he raps on You Need Me, I Don’t Need You. “Keep the genre pretty basic.” Despite the dishevelled exterior, he knows exactly what he’s doing, and if you ask his fans they’ll tell you he’s doing it exactly right.
Tour details: edsheeran.com