REVIEW: Ed Sheeran, I think I jinxed you, and for that I am so sorry. In my review of your last show – one of the three warm-up gigs you performed at the Wellington Opera House last week – I moaned that you hadn’t played Galway Girl, the most popular song of yours I knew.
It turns out the reason you didn’t play Galway Girl was because you didn’t have your violinist, the extremely talented Tina Hizon, with you at the time.
And because you didn’t perform the song with Tina at your three warm-up shows you forgot the lyrics for Galway Girl during your sold-out show at Sky Stadium Thursday night.
Ed, what happened? Everyone and their mum knows the lyrics to Galway Girl. Half the lyrics are in the title: you just repeat with my pretty little Galway Girl until the words lose their meaning!
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But it’s understandable. You were performing in front of a crowd of thousands, in a city you often say you love – recently you said you would live here if you hadn’t met your wife. So that’s a lot of pressure.
The show itself was an absolute spectacle. The last time I saw Sheeran perform it was at an intimate gig at the Opera House, and the Sky Stadium show was the opposite.
The venue said they expected a record-breaking 48,000 people to attend Thursday’s concert – that’s more than twice the population of the town of Masterton.
Sheeran pulled out all the stops for the set’s design, with giant glowing guitar picks covered in equals symbols hanging around the stage.
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When a countdown started on the screen until Sheeran’s arrival on stage, the crowd started cheering. And when Sheeran appeared, playing Tides on an acoustic guitar, they cheered even harder.
Sheeran is a born performer. He moved smoothly through I’m a Mess, Castle on the Hill, and 2step, never missing a beat until he hit Galway Girl, when he stopped and restarted, apologising to his violinist.
That was the first and only snag of the night – an obvious disappointment to Sheeran, who had repeatedly said how much he wanted the show to be perfect for Wellington.
After stopping during the performance of Galway Girl, the artist told the crowd he was getting in his own head, convincing himself he was going to forget the lyrics.
Juan Zarama Perini/Stuff
Despite a small mishap where the singer forgot his own lyrics, Sheeran wowed at Thursday’s Sky Stadium concert.
But Sheeran, despite not knowing the lyrics to – Galway Girl? Seriously? – managed to save the show with his usual charm and kindness. A young girl in the crowd who said she knew the entire song’s lyrics was invited to come up and sing Galway Girl with Sheeran.
The wee lass absolutely smashed it to the delight of the crowd, singing all the lyrics to the song, even the ones that weren’t in the chorus. Kiddo, whoever you are – every media company in the country will be trying to speak with you on Friday. Good luck.
Yes, that includes Stuff – we’d love to hear from the lucky fan who got pulled up on stage, her family and friends. Get in touch with us at newstips@stuff.co.nz
The rest of the show ran smoothly. Stand-outs to me were Bloodstream – a bass-throbbing addictive banger – and You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, the final song the artist played, which didn’t impress me at his last performance – seriously, rapping? – but blew me away this time with its overlapping harmonies.
JUAN ZARAMA PERINI/Stuff
When a countdown started on the screen until Sheeran’s arrival on stage, the crowd started cheering. And when Sheeran appeared, playing Tides on an acoustic guitar, they cheered even harder.
Ed-Sheeran super-fan Lilly Haughey attended the concert with me.
Before the concert I asked Lily a few questions about Sheeran. What was the artist’s appeal to her? His “Ed-factor”, so to speak. Why do so many people love the music of this strangely normal looking man with the voice of a ginger angel?
Lily said it was his genuineness. Sheeran’s music is classically romantic in a way that brings to mind guys holding boom-boxes over their heads. It feels honest in its sentimentality, in a way a world filled with disingenuous things often does not.
“Anyone can sing it and anyone can love it.”
I think Lily hit the nail on the head. During the concert there was an elderly couple wearing matching Ed Sheeran t-shirts, who slow-danced together during Perfect. And I don’t think there was a single person in that stadium that wasn’t singing along with Sheeran to A-Team.
In some ways, Sheeran seems like he would have been perfectly happy if he had never become famous. And maybe, in another life where he never composed A-Team, he would still be performing gigs in grimy pubs throughout London, “writing and gigging and writing and gigging” as he said during the concert.
But I’m glad I get to exist in a universe where I could see Sheeran and a little girl in a black singlet sing Galway Girl together in front of 48,000 people.
That was pretty cool.
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