"My job is to entertain you. Your job is to be entertained by me." Ed Sheeran is as good as his word.
On the surface, Sheeran is as everyman as his audience. Dig deeper though, and both his look (ginger hair, unconvincing facial hair, shirt, trainers) and his albums (X and the transatlantic Number 1, +), are scant preparation for the magnificent, compelling spectacle that is Ed Sheeran live.
That the 23-year-old played for 90 minutes accompanied only by a succession of guitars, a mini-plinth, a smorgasbord of effects pedals and bog-standard lighting and screens was odd and brave enough. Yet there was no braggadocio or swagger, just super-confident, nerveless amiability, as if it were the most natural and simple thing in the world for one man to entice another 20,000 to sing his songs with him. On the up-tempo Bloodstream and the Dylan-esque stream of consciousness You Need Me I Don’t Need You, the frenzied, lovestruck crowd participation went to the back row of the top tier. Everyman? Hardly.
Sheeran was many musical parts, ill-fitting in theory but tailor-made in practice. Not one to shy away from expertly crafted ballads such as the luscious Tenerife Sea, he dipped into the catalogues of both Blackstreet and The Backstreet Boys. Fearless to the core, he was a surprisingly deft rapper on Take It Back; he sang of the habits of hobbits on I See Fire, while the fabulous Give Me Love began as a lovesick lament but ended as an abandoned rock squall.
Right now, there is nobody else even attempting (let alone emulating) what Sheeran is doing live and I’m far from sure there ever has been at his global level. His early pledge was honoured. He certainly did the entertaining. It was the least the crowd could do to be so lavishly entertained.
The show came after Sheeran revealed that before becoming famous, he was homeless for two-and-a-half years. In his new book A Visual Journey, he also admitted to sleeping rough outside Buckingham Palace as well as spending a week catching up on sleep on Circle Line trains.
Oct 13-15, 08448 24 48 24, theo2.co.uk/events/detail/ed-sheeran
