I’m not an Ed Sheeran fan, but I am immensely impressed with his stage and music craft.
His new song Bad Habits came out recently, and it’s different to anything he has done before. It’s bass-heavy, with an almost-house vibe.
As I listened to it, I thought: how is Sheeran going to play this live? (For those that don’t know, Sheeran plays shows solo. It’s just him, his guitar, and a loop pedal that allows him to record multiple layers of sound and have them play over each other.)
And then, he releases this: the first live version of Bad Habits.
He uses a keyboard for the bass and synthesiser, and then his guitar for the percussion and rest of the music. It’s not super polished with auto tune or a backing track, but that’s the allure of Sheeran.
He’s the only person in the world who can stand in front of 80,000 people at Wembley with just a guitar and keep them enthralled for 2 hours.
Solo-Sheeran is impressive.