One of our favourite new artists, Ed Sheeran, appears on the cover of RWD this month. Ed wears the rather lovely GA-110C-1AER on the cover, and the GA-11OC-7AER and DW-6900NB-7ER on the inside pages. Ed has been causing a huge stir with his No5: Collaborations EP, featuring everyone from Wiley to P Money and Devlin. He also gave a barn-storming performance on Jools Holland this April, with many predicting rather huge things for the singer/ songwriter. It's been quite a journey for Ed, who has done upwards of 300 gigs around the country in the last year or two, staying on friend's sofas while he tried to make a name for himself. With the independently released Collaborations going to No.2 on iTunes (held off only by Rihanna), labels saw the potential, and earlier this year Sheeran signed to Asylum Records and promptly sold out his very first UK tour.
Here's a little of what Ed told RWD:
What’s the toughest part of being a singer?
Well I’m still sofa-surfing – not because there’s no money, it’s that there’s no time to go and look at a flat. It gets to 2am and I’m like ‘Where am I going to stay tonight’? That’s not a nice feeling. Or being told you have a day off and then it’s a last minute studio session or gig, photoshoot etc., but you just keep going, The day I flew back from LA to Jools Holland, I was so jetlagged but I was like, ‘I’ll do this and then I’ll have a couple of days off’ but then next day it was, bam!, back in the studio. There’s no time. But there’s no point complaining about stuff like that because two years ago I would have given my left leg to do that. Life isn’t always as peachy as everyone thinks it is, but it is also really good…!
And the toughest lesson you’ve learnt?
Probably having to realise that not everyone’s going to like you. I used to read all my press – I’ve stopped that now. They’d say it was insipid or that it made Paolo Nutini sound edgy. I’d think ‘Why would you say that?’ I picture myself as a nice person – I’m probably not! – but I try to treat people how I’d like to be treated, so when you read something bad about yourself, it makes you realise that someone can be really opposed to you. Master Shortie actually gave me a bit of advice. I get like 1 bad tweet for every 200 good ones, and I’d tweet back at them. He asked me why and said ‘You’ve got 200 fans saying they love you and one guy saying he hates you, and you’re replying to the guy who hates you? Why don’t you use that tweet to ignore him and reply to a fan and make their day?’ So every time I get a bad tweet, I go to the next good tweet and reply to that. Instead of focusing on the hatred, it’s better to focus on the love and who likes the music. It’s good advice.
Of all the amazing things that have happened in the last couple of months, what’s been the highpoint?
My mum and dad coming to Jools Holland and sitting next to Ringo Star was pretty cool; seeing my dad’s face was pretty cool. Ringo came and said hi to me at the end... What else? Having The A Team played on Radio 1 was such a big moment because I wrote that in a really scummy student house in Guildford, Surrey, and a year later it’s playlisted on Radio 1; that’s pretty f**king cool. Actually, in general, life is pretty cool right now. Yup, pretty flipping cool! I thought the day I played Jools Holland and got played by Fearne Cotton and Zane Lowe and got playlisted – and all the wonderful things that have happened this past month – I thought that would be the day I was ‘that guy’ and I’d feel like I’d made it. But I keep putting the goalposts further back. So I’ve done all that, sold out the tour and all these wicked things, but I’m just still going. I haven’t looked back. Now it’s a No.1 single and a No.1 album. After that, it will be a million selling album and after that, it will be to go platinum in America. I’ll just keep going.
Here's Ed performing his new single, The A Team, on a canal boat. Obvs.
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