Ed Sheeran, Roundhay Park, Leeds, review: The emotive everyman continues to unify his audience
By Daniel Dylan Wray
“I was born in Yorkshire and raised in Suffolk, so I felt like I needed to play these shows,” said Ed Sheeran to a mud-caked Leeds audience on Friday as he opened up the final run of his Divide Tour, which concludes with four homecoming gigs in Ipswich over the bank holiday weekend. Two and a half years in, it has now overtaken U2 as the highest-grossing tour ever.
Marking this place in musical history is emblematic of Sheeran’s omnipotence and stark transformation from busker to global superstar. His recent No. 6 Collaborations Project topped charts worldwide, whilst the reverberations from 2017’s multi-million-selling album Divide can still be felt everywhere.
In many ways, Sheeran’s rise to stadium-filling artist is at odds with his simple and minimal set up; armed with just an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal to sing songs that are regularly more tender and intimate than they are extravagant and vivacious. However, part of his appeal seems to be in his ability to turn open-mic night outpourings into relatable mass singalongs. The opening Castle On the Hill was testament to this, as the crowd roared into life and screamed every word in unison. He paid thanks to their lung-busting efforts later on, saying, “This isn’t a one-man show, it’s a two-man show with you guys. It wouldn’t happen without you.”
While Sheeran’s overly earnest, deeply emotive everyman songs already produce something of a love-hate response in people, his foray into rap on Eraser, the opening track on his Divide album, produced a feeling more akin to the latter with its clunky and cringey delivery. It’s an approach mirrored by the way that Sheeran spoke on stage too, often filling silences with awkward small talk like a substitute teacher on their first day.
It’s when Sheeran was locked into his guitar playing and singing, with the loop pedal adding a multi-layered accompaniment, that he was most comfortable and convincing. It’s a difficult task to make a solo acoustic performance feel captivating to tens of thousands of people – especially given the relatively low-key visuals and lack of stage theatrics - but he regularly managed to project his sparse love songs in a way that gripped and unified the audience.
As the evening went on - with the exception of Irish folk band Beoga, who came on to shift the tempo with a string-soaked take on Galway Girl - the limitations of Sheeran’s set up manifested. There was no Stormzy, Khalid or Bruno Mars coming out to replicate their guest spots from No. 6 Collaborations Project and after almost two hours things became rather one-note. A closing run of tracks such as Perfect and the notably more rock-driven Blow ended the night and the crowd’s empathic screams for Shape of You could be heard several towns over as the infectious melody rang out.
Sheeran’s one-man-and-his-dog street busker approach to playing gargantuan shows is beginning to feel a little tired, underwhelming and repetitive, but his dominance and ongoing success is unlikely to waver any time soon.
Tickets: edsheeran.com/tour
