Born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and reared in Framlingham, Suffolk, Edward Christopher Sheeran MBE (/rn/; 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Sheeran’s independent long-player No. 5 Collaborations Project was published in the early months of 2011. That same year, he inked a deal with Asylum Records.
Career
“+” (pronounced “plus”), Sheeran’s first album, was published in September 2011 and quickly became the most popular record in the United Kingdom. The track “The A Team” was his first commercial success. Sheeran was recognized as both the Best British Male Solo Artist and the Best British Breakthrough Act at the 2012 Brit Awards.
Multiply, Sheeran’s second studio album was a worldwide smash when it was released in June of 2014. It was 2015’s number two best-selling album globally.
The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors presented him with the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year in 2015, the same year that he won Album of the Year at the 2015 Brit Awards. In 2016, he won Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance Grammys for his tune “Thinking Out Loud”.
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Controversy
One grime musician, Chokri, stated that the hook line “Oh I” from Sheeran’s song was very similar to the lyric “Oh Why” from his own song. Sheeran had previously stated that he had forgotten hearing ‘Oh Why’ before the legal dispute.
Sheeran “neither knowingly nor unconsciously imitated” Chokri’s song, Judge Antony Zacaroli reportedly ruled, as reported by the BBC. It has been one of Spotify’s all-time most streamed songs and the best-selling single in the UK in 2017.
The 31-year-old British pop star’s 2017 smash hit “Shape of You” is one of the most downloaded songs in the world and has been the basis for countless TikTok videos and Instagram Reels. But since the new year began, things have been on the wrong track.
In 2018, Sami Chokri and producer Ross O’Donoghue sued Sheeran, claiming that the hook to “Shape of You” was lifted from “Oh Why,” a song by Chokri and O’Donoghue. Sheeran’s co-writers Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac were also named as defendants in the case.
A musician named Chokri, who goes by the stage name Sami Switch, claimed that Sheeran’s song was an infringement because it shared “certain sentences and phrases” with his own. Sheeran, McDaid, and Mac all refuted the claim after it was made. A lawyer for Chokri said that Sheeran knew nothing about his client and had never heard the song in question.
Chokri’s camp stated that forensic musicologists would hear similarities between his song and the sample, specifically in the hook line and the melodic progression. Sheeran and his camp have contended that the melodic structure of the hook line was so ubiquitous that it couldn’t be considered plagiarism.
Influences and Styles in Music
Sheeran shared the stage with one of his musical influences, Eric Clapton (pictured), on April 13, 2016, at the Nippon Budokan Arena in Tokyo, Japan, to perform “I Will Be There.”
Many have categorized Ed Sheeran‘s music as soft rock or folk-pop. Sheeran includes rap elements in his songs as well. When he was young, Sheeran used to listen to Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, and Elton John’s greatest hits recordings.
Van Morrison’s Irish Heartbeat was the album that first got Sheeran interested in music, he has said. Instilling in him a love for music from a young age, his father took him to concerts. These included the Royal Albert Hall concert by Eric Clapton, the Birmingham concert by Paul McCartney, and the New York City concert by Bob Dylan.
“He’s the reason I started playing guitar,” Sheeran says of Clapton. He recalled being eleven years old when he saw Eric Clapton perform at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebration in June 2002 at the Party at the Palace on the grounds of Buckingham Palace.
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Acting
After Sheeran starred in a 2019 commercial for Heinz, the band released “Edchup.” Sheeran made his acting debut in a cameo role as himself on the New Zealand soap opera Shortland Street in 2014. In May 2015, he appeared as himself and performed on a live episode of the NBC sitcom Undateable.
Later that same year, he recorded scenes for the Australian soap opera Home and Away, as a character based on himself.
Sheeran was cast as Sir Cormac in the FX medieval drama The Bastard Executioner by creator Kurt Sutter after recording a cover of Foy Vance’s “Make It Rain” for Sons of Anarchy. Sheeran also appeared as himself in the 2016 film Bridget Jones’s Baby, where he met Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) at the Glastonbury Festival.