Ed Sheeran did it on his own.

Just three chords and the truth. And some famous effects on his guitar. Just him (the unassuming everyman of superstardom) in a black T-shirt, black trousers and some yellow runners.

He mixed hip-hop and balladry. He mixed pop and folk.

Rolling Stone magazine once dubbed him a purveyor of radio friendly folk-pop for songs with choruses meant to “incite cell-phone-lit sing-alongs in stadiums”. In a sold-out 3 Arena on the quays in Dublin on a wet and blustery night, everyone held their phones aloft and sang the words back to the 32-year-old from West Yorkshire as if he had written them personally for them.

This was evidenced from their reaction to songs like ‘Give Me Love’ (from his 2012, debut studio album, + , which he opened the show with at 8.10pm), ‘Castle On The Hill’, ‘Shivers’, ‘Dive’ and ‘Eyes Closed’, to name but a few.

And when he didn’t want to let the songs do the talking he spoke movingly and entertainingly before and sometimes after the performances.

He was quite the chatterbox.

It was almost like his own Ted Talk – an Ed Talk perchance: whereupon he held the crowd in thrall with his on-the-fly riffing about vulnerability, Guinness, Enya, hobbits, Pokemon, his height, being a nerd, cows in the countryside, life and loss — and everything inbetween. 

Here are some of the highlights…

Introducing ‘Eyes Closed’, a moving and beautiful new song about losing someone – in this case his friend Jamal Edwards, who died tragically in February 2022 – from his upcoming fifth studio album entitled “−”.

“When I played this song for the first time I cried. I’ve never cried onstage before. I found it mad embarrassing. I thought: ‘Why did that happen?’”

He was quick to answer his own question.

“I think that it happened because when I write songs they belong to me. They are my personal experiences in my real life, in the things that I go through.

“Then I made the album. When I put the album out, it instantly belongs to you guys. The music and the stories belong to you. You guys don’t listen to ‘Perfect’ and go, ‘This is a song about Ed’s wife’ [Cherry Seaborn]. You listen to it and think it relates to you and that it connects you to this person.

“I think that’s why I can stand in stage and sing songs of the last twelve years of my ups and downs. I can sing them to you without feeling the emotion that I felt at the time when I was writing them.”

“With this song ‘Eyes Closed’, it is still pretty raw. It has been out for almost a week. I really feel that it does belong to you guys now. The feel around the song, the stories around the song, is for people to share stories of grief and sadness and loss. It connects to the song with you guys – and it doesn’t make me feel as sad about my own loss, if that makes sense, because it is now a communal thing and we’re in this together. So, this is a song that means a hell of a lot to me. I hope that if this song doesn’t mean a lot to you now that one day it does. It’s called ‘Eyes Closed.’”

Discussing memes and how he is sometimes tempted to incorporate them into his song

“I get sent memes. And they kind of creep into my psyche when I’m playing these songs. Has anyone heard the bloke from Nickelback [Ed plays it on the guitar and sings, ‘Baby, now, take me into your f***ing arms?’ And every time I play the song [‘Thinking Out Loud’], I think, ‘No, don’t do that!’ Has anyone seen the meme ‘Deez nuts’? Sometimes when I play ‘Thinking Out Loud’, I am thinking ‘No, don’t go: “Will your mouth still remember the taste ….of DEEZ NUTS!”’"

The crowd roars with laughter.

“I know it is a song that means the world to people and I’m on stage going, ‘Don’t sing that!’ One day it might happen…”

He was looking forward to a drop of Guinness

“I released the new single on Friday and then I started the tour on Thursday. I’ve sort of had the week off drinking because I’ve had a gig every single day. But tonight I’ve two kegs of Guinness backstage and I’m excited to get stuck in. So, for me tonight is going to be a party and I need you guys to have a party too. I know it’s Thursday but we can make a Friday.”

Being a nerd

“I’ve never been cool. I’ve never be a cool kid. When I was a young, young child, I didn’t have a lot of friends. I was super into Pokemon, Lord of The Rings. And as I got older, that hasn’t changed.

“Sometimes things happen in my career that I can predict. Like I predicted that once I had a hit single people would want to see me in concert. What I couldn’t predict was that the things that I loved as a child would then manifest themselves into my career in a cool way.

“I loved Pokemon. I was in Japan in 2019. My friend went, ‘Do you want to meet the guy who started Pokemon? I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ Then I met him and he said, ‘Will you write a song for us?’ And I said, ‘Yes, I will,” he says referring to ‘Celestial’.

He then recalls being invited to meet Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and thinking he wanted him to be an extra because of his “challenged height”.

“When I got to New Zealand it was all hush-hush, and Peter [Jackson] said this is The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug movie. It is almost finished. What I want you to do is write the final song for it.

“I was really taken aback by this, because of you seen The Lord Of The Rings films and The Hobbit film the last thing you would think to associate with his films is a pop star. Like Enya does the end of The Return Of The King and that works wonderfully. But I was coming off like [songs like] ‘Lego House’ and ‘A Team.’ So in my mind I’m like: ‘How is this going to work?’

“So, he played me the film. And at the end [Pause, looking at the crowd, as if he is going to give away what the film is about]… I mean, it’s been out for ten years! If you haven’t watched it yet, there’s no spoilers! [Laughs] The book exists! There’s a dragon! The dragon burns the f*** out of this town!

“And at the end, he’s flying away and the town’s burning and it’s all chaos, and he goes: ‘I am fire! I am death!’ Then the film ends. Then Peter looked at me and said, ‘What your job is to calm people after this. People will be watching it in the movie theatre and your song will come on and calm people.’ 

“As soon as he said that, I had an idea. I wrote the song [‘I See Fire’] that day. I went into the studio the next day and recorded it with an orchestra. I love it. What I love most about it though was doing the press tour with all the actors and getting to meet Gandalf and s***.

“This song is in my top three favourite songs – and it always will be because it means a lot to me on a personal level. I love movies. I’m a f***ing nerd. I’m still a nerd. I’m proud of it.”

He then plays ‘I See Fire’, with its haunting opening verse :

‘Oh, misty eye of the mountain below/

Keep careful watch of my brothers' souls/

And should the sky be filled with fire and smoke.’

Being a teenage songwriter

“My first album I wrote as a teenager. It was about teenage things. It was about getting drunk and having a girlfriend and moving to the city.”

Dublin being the best night of the tour – so far

“It always feels like disingenuous when I say it because I have heard so many performers at so many gigs go [adopts fake voice] ‘This is the best show on the tour.’ But then when actually it is and someone says it, no one believes it. But you can trust me on this one: so far this is the best show of the tour. I’ve got [a show in] Paris on Sunday but Dublin is always the best one – and Ireland in general. I love touring Ireland. I love to get to go around Ireland. I’ve gone to Cork and I’ve gone to Limerick and Galway. It’s f***ing fantastic. Is everyone feeling entertained s far?”

He asks the crowd to be kind to him on social media if he messes up the next song

“When I was 17, 18, I liked to see how many words I could fit into a verse. Now I try a more minimal approach. This song, I haven’t sung it for a very long time and I am like: ‘There’s probably people in the audience tonight who know it better than me. So, if I mess up, Dublin, and you’re filming on your phones, just be kind to me on social media. Don’t make me a meme.” [Laughs]

He then sings the opening lines of ‘U.N.I’, a song from 2011: ‘I found your hairband on my bedroom floor / The only evidence that you've been here before / And I don't get waves of missing you anymore.’

Losing his voice from being naughty on a boozy all-nighter before his first big show in Ireland back in the day

“This is my tenth time playing the 3 Arena. I remember the first time I played here. I always get mad excited when I get back to Ireland. I come back here and I just get excited. Anyway, the first night I played the 3 Arena I went out all night and I lose my voice. It was the first massive, massive gig that I’d played – and I’d lost my voice for the gig by being naughty the night before. Thankfully I’m more grown up now."

Praying the Irish nation liked his music; his prayers were answered

“I know you guys know my heritage. My dad is Irish. I came over here, four times a year. Ireland is where I fell in love with being a musician. I went to Whelan’s [a music venue on Wexford Street in Dublin] with my cousin to see Damien Rice. That’s what made me want to be a singer-songwriter. So when I signed a record deal I came over here for Arthur’s Day and I did four gigs around Dublin. I was hoping and praying that you guys would like my music. I feel that the love I have for you is returned.” Crowd roars their approval. “Ireland was the place that embraced me the quickest. I got big here first. I got bigger here quicker than in the UK.”

Cows waking him up in the countryside

“I moved down to London when I was 16, 17. I come from the countryside – in the middle of bloody nowhere. It is super quiet. The only thing that might wake you up is a cow. Or a sheep. So, when I moved to London, to a place called Finsbury Park, it was above a bar called T Bird. I remember the first night being so excited about living in London. Wow. I was up all night. Sirens were keeping me up all night – and I was really excited, because I had never been outside of the countryside really. This is the song I wrote that night. It was the first song I wrote in London,” he says before performing ‘The City’, with its lines about “sirens bleed through my windowsill” and “I can't close my eyes.”

Last night at the 3 Arena no one dared take their eyes off the famous Mr Ed.

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