Edward Christopher Sheeran MBE (born February 17 1991) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer, musician, actor, and businessman. After first recording music in 2004, he began gaining attention through YouTube. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. He signed with Asylum Records the same year.
Sheeran’s debut album, + (pronounced “plus”), was released in September 2011 and topped the UK Albums Chart. It contained his first hit single The A Team. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. Sheeran’s second studio album, × (pronounced “multiply”), was released in June 2014. It was named the second-best-selling album worldwide of 2015. In the same year, × won Album of the Year at the 2015 Brit Awards, and he received the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors. A single from ×, Thinking Out Loud, earned him the 2016 Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and the Best Pop Solo Performance.
Sheeran’s third album, ÷ (pronounced “divide”), was released in March 2017, and was the best-selling album worldwide of 2017. The first two singles from the album Shape of You and Castle on the Hill broke records in a number of countries by debuting in the top two positions of the charts. He also became the first artist to have two songs debut in the US top 10 in the same week. By March 2017, Sheeran had accumulated ten top 10 singles from ÷ on the UK Singles Chart, breaking the record for most top 10 UK singles from one album. His fourth single from ÷, Perfect, reached number one in the US, Australia and the UK, where it became the Christmas number one in 2017. The world’s best-selling artist of 2017, he was named the Global Recording Artist of the Year. Released in 2019, his fourth studio album No.6 Collaborations Project debuted at number one in most major markets, and spawned three UK number one singles, I Don’t Care, Beautiful People and Take Me Back to London.
Sheeran has sold more than 150 million records worldwide, making him one of the world’s best-selling music artistes. He has 84.5 million RIAA-certified units in the US, and two of his albums are in the list of the best-selling albums in UK chart history: × at number 20, and ÷ at number 34. In December 2019, the Official Charts Company named him artist of the decade, with the most combined success in the UK album and singles charts in the 2010s. Globally, Spotify named him the second most streamed artist of the decade. Beginning in March 2017, his ÷ Tour became the highest-grossing of all time in August 2019. An alumnus of the National Youth Theatre in London, Sheeran’s acting roles include appearing in the 2019 film Yesterday.
Influences
Sheeran’s earliest memories include listening to the records of Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Elton John’s Greatest Hits. According to Sheeran, the album that introduced him to music was Van Morrison’s Irish Heartbeat. During his childhood his father took him to live concerts that would inspire his musical creations. These included seeing Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall, Paul McCartney in Birmingham, and Bob Dylan. On the influence of Clapton, Sheeran says, “He’s the reason I started playing guitar”. He singled out Clapton’s performance at the Party at the Palace in the grounds of Buckingham Palace, “I was eleven when I saw Eric Clapton play at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee concert in June 2002. I remember him walking on stage with this rainbow-coloured Stratocaster and playing the first riff of Layla. I was hooked. Two days later I bought a black Stratocaster copy for £30 that came with an amp. All I did for the next month was try to play that Layla riff.”
He has also cited The Beatles, Nizlopi and Eminem as his biggest musical influences. According to Sheeran, he had a stutter in his speech when he was younger, and he credited rapping along to Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP for helping him stammer less. He was also inspired by ‘Cannonball’ singer-songwriter Damien Rice in 2002, with Sheeran stating, “seeing him play this small club in Ireland, I was able to meet him, and he was unbelievably cool. I went straight home and started writing songs. I would not be doing what I’m doing now if he’d been a jerk.” He also played the guitar to Westlife’s Greatest hits album when he was ten, citing them as one of his influences. Sheeran collaborated with his idol Eric Clapton in April 2016, with Sheeran stating to People magazine, “I sang on Eric Clapton’s album I Still Do. It’s one thing having him on mine, but being on his, that’s an honour that you can’t ever pinpoint on how great that is. I did something for his record, and I was credited as ‘Angelo Mysterioso,’ appearing as a guest on Clapton’s I Will Be There, in addition to performing the song with Clapton on stage, and he did something for my record performing a guitar solo on Dive on Sheeran’s album ÷ and was credited as ‘Angelo Mysterioso.’” Sheeran also cited Taylor Swift as one of his influences, suggesting in 2015 their respective success drives each other on. Sheeran and his work have influenced various recording artists, including Shawn Mendes, Louis Tomlinson, Camila Cabello, and Cody Simpson, while English singer Hrvy has called him “such a good songwriter”.