Ed Sheeran “+” Review
The kind of person who once believed the internet would give keen-eared kids the opportunity to break free of the stifling conformity of the music industry and alight on new sounds too groundbreaking, confrontational and futuristic for cautious record companies to countenance might let out a little yell of horror at Sheeran’s rise. Ed Sheeran Lyrics The kids who like him do indeed appear to have spent the last few years ignoring the sclerotic conformity of the music industry – but have been listening instead to something that sounds exactly like it could have been released by a major record company. You can see why. Sheeran has a really good grasp on the kind of topics that would matter to his young audience, touchingly detailing a teenage miscarriage on Small Bump and a love affair dashed by the clearing system on U.N.I., while The City captures the rootlessness of a school leaver departing their hometown. But his cottage-industry past and chumminess with Wiley notwithstanding, Sheeran is an utterly mainstream artist: The A-Team, for example, is essentially Phil Collins’s Another Day in Paradise for the Moshi Monsters generation. Ed Sheeran Songs You Need Me mentions two of his key inspirations: fleetingly famous pop-rapper Just Jack and Irish singer-songwriter Damien Rice. The latter’s influence is particularly pronounced on +’s hushed closing tracks, Kiss Me and Give Me Love, both accomplished songs, although you search in vain for the hint of the small-hours weirdness that marked Rice out from the glut of post-David Gray singer-songwriters. In fact, Sheeran sounds like the artist Rice’s record company pushed him to be, a state of affairs that led the Irishman to shave one half of his head midway through a US tour in a bizarre tonsorial protest against the overpromotion of his debut album. Indeed, at its worst, + is a pretty winsome business. The halting style and conversational lyrics of Wake Me Up – “I know you love Shrek because we’ve watched it 12 times , I’ve always been shit at computer games” – sound exactly like that grisly Match.com advert in which a berk with an acoustic guitar woos a berkette over their mutual love of The Godfather Part III. A listener who can keep their last meal down during that, however, might note that apart from his teen appeal, Sheeran’s strength is his melodic ability, a way with a really strong, radio-friendly tune, as on The City or Grade 8. Ed Sheeran Lyrics You can’t help wishing he’d put said ability to slightly more edgy use, but then again, he still might: at least there’s evidence that Ed Sheeran might still be around when the screaming girls grow up and calm down.