Ed Sheeran is really in the wrong job. The British singer-songwriter has achieved an impressive amount of success over the last two years, but last night at Madison Square Garden (where he’ll play again on November 1 and 7), he showed that his real talent lies in crowd control.
At any arena sized showed, you can always expect plenty of sing-a-long moments. But from the outset Sheeran had the packed out crowd doubling as a backing band by encouraging them to join in choruses, add harmonies and even provide beats. Perhaps most impressively, he managed to get the audience of mostly teenage girls to be silent for the quietest tunes. These are the sort of skills that many an exhausted parent would give a kidney to have.
But the songs that hide underneath his crowd-working tricks are still as drippy and dreary as they come. Sheeran’s debut album “+” emerged in 2011 to little fanfare but his ticket to American fame came courtesy of Taylor Swift who selected him to open for her during her “Red” tour. It’s turned out to be both a blessing and a curse because while he is now a big draw on his own, Sheeran’s mainly acoustic antics are still embarrassingly doe-eyed.
Even though he’s now a star, his sensitive, guitar-strumming image remains. Songs such as “Give Me Love” and “UNI” are so unbearably wimpy that it’s almost unsettling. And then there is the small matter of his lyrics which read like a dull, adolescent diary.
“Our house gets cold when you cut the heating/Without you to hold I’d be freezing,” he whimpered during the cringeworthy “Drunk.” That drivel is practically Shakespeare compared to the domestic references of video games, cups of tea and “Shrek” DVDs that litter the equally drab “Wake Me Up.” The general wisdom for songwriters looking for subject matter is to write about what you know but with Sheeran, what he knows is just too boring to ever speak of.
During the finale of “The Parting Glass” (a traditional Irish folk song and one of many covers padding out the set), Sheeran lost control of his fans slightly, with one girl yelling “f–k me,” at the stage. The fact that someone would be so stimulated by watching Sheeran’s wet-blanket act was astounding in itself, but it was too much for the goody-two-shoes singer. “That was a bit inappropriate,” he sulked, now sounding like a grumpy old dad himself. “Can that be the last outburst of the night please?”
So there you have it. Ed Sheeran doesn’t like people to get too excited when listening to his music. Don’t worry buddy. For most of us, there is absolutely no danger of that ever happening.