When he first saunters onto the stage with his guitar in hand, it would be easy to mistake Ed Sheeran for any one of the twenty-something year-olds in the audience tonight. With his scruffy ginger hair and ill-fitting jeans, it’s fair to say he doesn’t initially radiate star quality. Until he opens his mouth, that is.
Accompanied by nothing more than his guitar, a microphone and a loop pedal, Sheeran’s raw musical talent is clear from the off. He opens the show with a seamless performance of Grade 8, single-handedly proving that a gig stripped back to it’s bare bones without any frills can be just as entertaining as one filled to the brim with costume changes and wild pyrotechnics. Though this sets the tone for the majority of the show, the twenty-year-old takes it to a whole new level when he performs a mesmerising cover of Jamie Woon’s Wayfaring Stranger without even a microphone. The sold-out audience is so in awe of his voice that, for the duration of the song, they actually stop screaming and singing along in favour of listening intently to each and every word that is sung. The big surprise of the night comes when tattooed rapper Mikill Pane joins Sheeran onstage to perform Little Lady. Though a very strange and unexpected coupling, the pair’s performance goes down a storm with the 1,250-strong audience and sends energy levels through the roof.
Whilst Sheeran comes across as incredibly comfortable onstage, there is no sign of an ego and he genuinely appears to be doing this out of a love for music and nothing else. Watching him perform, you get the overwhelming sense that were he not performing to a sold-out crowd of adoring fans tonight, he would be just as happy doing the same on his local high-street for spare change.
Ed Sheeran’s meteoric rise to the top of the charts has been well documented. Some have rightfully questioned how an unknown young lad from Halifax could conquer the UK charts so suddenly. However, for those lucky enough to watch him tonight, there is no questioning the fact that his eventual success was inevitable.