The Pride Of The Lion Becomes The Downfall – Ed Sheeran Cancelled

There are very few artists who manage to completely dominate their generation. The public charts are hard to get a foothold on nevermind take over completely. Now you might be wondering what’s the point here? I’m sure there are artists in your mind right now who you believe dominated the charts. I’m sure you’re right. Many artists have major success on the big stage, but not many can claim the records of Ed Sheeran, or to give him his full name, Ed Shee-ranhismouthlikeanangrytoddler, the subject of today’s post. From his meteoric rise to his seemingly humble and polite nature, it truly seemed as though, like John Lennon and David Bowie before him, a true British hero had risen.

In truth I can understand how easily he could still be seen as a generational talent, he has more number ones than I do contacts in my phone, as well as the highest grossing tour of all time under his belt. We also cannot forget Eds average roots and grind into the position he’s in now, he’s always been very honest in his passion and pursuit of making melodies. A master of his craft in all rights, its Sheeran’s own words I should use to sum up his quintessentially British upbring, for this quote we will use one of his best tracks, Goldrush. “I do it for the love, waiting on the Gold rush. Keep it on the edge, smoking on a roll up.” Now obviously not all British teenagers smoke or pursue their dreams whole-heartedly, but we all know someone who does.

At long last we’ve reached the actual context and content of this post, if you read to this point I’m sure you’re already aware of Ed and his lovable personality. I genuinely have considered him a hero of mine for a while, his work ethic and passion paying off so much so it inspired me to begin pursuing writing myself. So it truly did hurt when Dan sent me a link today to an article in which Ed had a quote on the Rolling Stone website ‘Why do you need to read a review? Listen to it. It’s freely available! Make up your own mind. I would never read an album review and go, ‘I’m not gonna listen to that now’.

There are many angles in this quote we could take our opinions and reactions from so I’m going to focus on what are, in my opinion, the two most important and likely interpretations to the meaning of Ed’s words here.

Firstly, as someone who spends their time writing reviews and pieces, I hate to do it but this is where I will be playing devil’s advocate. He does have a point here, you shouldn’t base your opinions on other people’s words without first examining the work in question yourself. Sheep mentality is a very real and dangerous thing, our opinions must be our own so please review technology, games and music for yourself just to be doubly sure. Again, devil’s advocate. The second, and much more accurate interpretation in my opinion, is that Edward here has forgotten too much of his past while plotting his future.

He forgets about the aspiring authors, journalists, musicians and much more who have the absolute privilege to get access to small and exciting bands. He forgets the bond formed during the writing of these pieces, as we learn about these artists and their new and unique visions it’s hard not to form a sense of pride and wonder thinking about how yet again someone has come along to change the scene for the better. He forgets his days of standing in piss wet through clothes, shivering from the winter wind as he stood there on pavements and in doorways giving it everything he had to make it as a singer. He forgets that during those days many small publications saw something in his, they wrote articles and played his songs on radio. He forgets too much and it cannot stand, the idiocy in this statement makes absolutely no sense. I haven’t even taken the time to mention how poorly run bigger publications would be run if us smaller writers didn’t do the exact same technique he did. He forgets that every major magazine website that helped make him the superstar he is now started in an almost identical way, it’s not good enough Ed.

It’s truly heartbreaking to see a man so clearly betray everything that makes the industry great. If even artists like Sheeran begin demeaning the value of these pieces then I believe we’re all in trouble, the entire music scene. When you think of this piece I want you to think about something, if we lose reviews we lose the soul of music. As is stands there’s thousands of brilliant artists in the UK just desperate to be heard, to do that there’s a few things that help. Playing in front of small crowds to gain experience and these reviews are essential, venues are few and far between compared to budding artists so having articles written about you from multiple sources can help to give the manager an overall opinion of your value to their venue. This again is essential to the gain of traction for artists, venues and writers but Ed Sheeran grossed £500,000,000 so perhaps we don’t need any new artists, wouldn’t want him to feel threatened. It’s not like the entire quote reeked of a man who had read a bad review and couldn’t get it out of his head.