Are you ready for the cheesiest admission you’ll hear today? Here it is: there’s something about seeing Ed Sheeran in the flesh that makes you believe in music again. It sounds ridiculous and over-the-top, but I couldn’t be more serious.
Seeing Ed perform live is fun. It’s mind-boggling. It’s cathartic. And I’ve been lucky enough to experience it twice.
The first time I saw that shock of ginger hair in person was in 2012. Sheeran was meant to play at a small club in Toronto, which was great news for the few of us who had an idea who he was. He had been many a fan’s secret pleasure, this cheeky kid from a small town in Suffolk messing around on his guitar.
Suddenly, he wasn’t a secret at all. He got big. He got really, really big. His single, The A Team, was gaining traction and climbing up the charts in America. It got so much attention that even grabbed a Grammy nomination the year after.
They moved his Toronto gig from a club with a 2,500 person capacity to a beach venue twice its size. And yet, it was one of the most intimate, chilling shows I’d ever witnessed. I took a brief memento of it on my phone, and whenever I played it back afterwards, it sounded like Sheeran was right there in the room, jamming along.
Last night, I was in the crowd for another show of his, but this time all the way across the world: Dubai. Playing to 11,000 people at Dubai Media City Amphitheatre, he brought the kind of energy you would think was impossible for a one-man-show.
Here’s the thing with Sheeran: there’s no gimmicks. There’s no massive production. No theatrics or costume changes or back-up singers or supporting dancers. There isn’t even a band.
You’ve heard it a million times before, but it’s true. It’s just one guy up there, banging the life out of his acoustic guitar and using his loop pedal to build a sound so massive it can — and did — shake the entire amphitheatre.
He kicked it off with Lego House and followed it up with his radio hit Don’t, keeping all the naughty bits in for maximum impact, then went on to play a mix of old and new off + and x, sometimes pausing to spit quick rhymes, even as he reminded us he’s a singer, not a rapper.
He built up a crescendo with album track Bloodstream, reaching a pounding climax that was nearly all noise, leaving more than a few of us riddled with goosebumps. Later, he slid from a cover of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good to his visceral tune, I See Fire — the song played over the end credits of the Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug — and transported us seamlessly to the smoky wilderness that his words conjured up.
The 24-year-old saved the best for the last, sailing through The A Team, Thinking Out Loud (he whipped out a green electric guitar for this one), and the fan favourite, Give Me Love, which he said was “technically my last song”.
But when he came back after a brief disappearance off stage, that’s when the magic happened. True to his usual renditions of the song, he performed a stretched-out version of his never-back-down anthem You Need Me, I Don’t Need You with bits of 50 Cents’ In Da Club and Iggy Azalea’s Fancy thrown in for good measure. For anyone who needed to let off some steam, chanting the chorus along was a strange therapy.
Drenched in sweat and losing his voice, he finished off with a crowd-assisted performances of his latest smash hit, Sing, managing to breathe new life into it that doesn’t quite come across on the album.
“It’s my job to entertain you, it’s your job to be entertained,” were Sheeran’s opening words of the night. It’s not an easy feat, standing alone in front of more than 10,000 hungry people. I was admittedly doubtful — how was the guy I saw in 2012 at a venue half this size going to manage to serenade twice as many people just as efficiently? Even worse, how was he going to pull it off come July in front of 80,000 people at Wembley Stadium for three sold-out nights in a row?
I realise now that I was silly to worry. Faced with Sheeran’s charm and determination, Wembley won’t stand a chance.
