How nice guy Ed overtook Taylor Swift

January 23, 2015 11:23 am 6 comments Views: 7

Ed Sheeran plays solo guitar and his songs are accessible to people at home to learn. Picture: Justin Lloyd
Source: News Corp Australia

NICE guys finish last, so the saying goes. There is one man, though, whose recent chart success seems to challenge that maxim.

Official figures show that Ed Sheeran, who has persisted with his scruffy image and simple songwriting, was Australia’s biggest-selling artist of last year with his second album, X. His previous album + went four times platinum and continued to register in the top 50 biggest sellers here last year.

Sheeran, 23, already the most searched-for male celebrity on Google, may well see his career scale further heights this year, with two Grammy nominations and a world tour, which comes to Melbourne in March. Performing with just a backing band, loop pedal and an acoustic guitar, he is about to pull off the biggest busk of all time and is the first solo musician since John Denver to play stadiums by himself in Australia.

So how did Sheeran, a relatively normal bloke, making relatively normal music, manage to become one of the world’s biggest-selling artists?

Niceness alone, of course, doesn’t account for his blockbuster success with
X; just like +, it went four times platinum in Australia, selling more than 280,000 copies here and a staggering 1.7 million globally. It’s also has had more than 430 million streams worldwide since its release in June — more than any other artist. Perhaps it is more thanks to Sheeran’s skills in balancing his guise as the bastion of shabby student authenticity with the role of mercurial businessman — not to mention a fierce sense of underdog ambition.

A bit of luck helps, too. The initial spark for Sheeran’s stratospheric success can be traced back to two chance events. The first occurred during an impromptu LA trip in 2010, which led to a friendship with the actor and musician Jamie Foxx. Foxx saw Sheeran play and ended up providing him with exposure in the US on his radio show, The Foxxhole.

That same year, Sheeran’s music was noticed by the web mogul Jamal Edwards, whose online channel SB.TV has shone a light on the wealth of talent emerging from the UK grime scene. The SB.TV connections led to Sheeran collaborating with established grime artists including Wiley, JME and Sway, while he simultaneously worked the grind of indie venues in London, performing 300 shows in 2010 alone.

Mr nice guy Ed Sheeran is the biggest selling artist of 2014.
Source: Supplied

UK singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has overtaken Taylor Swift.
Source: Supplied

With opportunities in both the US and UK, Sheeran was able to establish fans on both sides of the Atlantic — an accomplishment many musicians can’t crack.

George Ergatoudis, head of music for Britian’s Radio 1 and 1Xtra, believes Sheeran’s ability to straddle a multitude of modern genres makes him stand out. “No one else channels Eminem and Damien Rice simultaneously like he can,” Ergatoudis says.

Such careful cultural curation appeals to a range of ages, genres and genders, and allows Sheeran to be playlisted across independent and commercial radio. As well as catering for the indie crowd and pop audiences — the singer has toured with Taylor Swift — Sheeran’s honeyed vocals and dalliance with rap styles has also helped increase his trajectory in the US, where hip hop and R&B are far more lucrative than in the UK. Last year he collaborated with rapper The Game and appeared on the cover of the influential rap magazine Vibe.

Ed Sheeran doing what he loves on stage. Picture: Justin Lloyd
Source: News Corp Australia

Though much rap music can be about bragging, intrinsic to Sheeran’s aesthetic is his ability to appear everyday. Material on + had an obsession with promoting his allegiance to reality (“Selling CDs from my rucksack aiming for the majors/Nationwide tour with Just Jack/Still had to get the bus back”), and his Twitter feed is a constant source of disarming truths, such as “doing the Victoria Secrets fashion show tonight and I’m eating a Greggs sausage roll in the dressing room”.

Oxford University’s professor of music Eric Clarke thinks this is a potent attribute for an artist. “His boy-next-door (image) — not very good looks but a perfectly nice guy — and the song Thinking Out Loud, with its reflections on getting older and fidelity and love in a fairly conventional context, is a slight counter-blast to fast-living celebrity culture,” Clarke says.

This sense of self-imposed legitimacy also taps into the heartfelt testimonies found on The X Factor.

According to the book Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, there are three kinds of authenticity in music’s history: cultural authenticity (appearing true to your culture), personal authenticity (appearing true to yourself), and representational authenticity (not “faking it” in terms of how you record your music).

The book’s co-author, Hugh Barker, says cultural authenticity has become slightly less important over time as music is increasingly globalised.

Ed Sheeran in a selfie with former Adelaide singer Sia.

He says: “Personal authenticity seems to be more prized than ever. Before the late ’60s, there were very few songs that directly referenced the writer’s life. That changed with songs by people like John Lennon, James Taylor, Carole King — and since that time autobiography has become ubiquitous, and is often used as a badge of authenticity.”

A far more straightforward explanation for Sheeran’s global impact lies within his songs.

Fiona Bevan, the singer-songwriter who co-wrote One Direction’s Little Things with Sheeran, pins the copyable nature of his songs on the youth market’s current captivation with him.

She says: “Because of the fact that Ed plays solo guitar, and you can hear the acoustic guitar part on the records, the songs are accessible to people to learn to play at home. All his songs are so well written that you can strip away all the production and the songs still stand in their own right. I think the YouTube generation gravitate towards this clear, seemingly simple songwriting when they want to cover their favourite songs, and share them with their networks — so there’s this incredible surge in awareness from fans on YouTube making their own versions and spreading them far and wide.”

Ed Sheeran joins Sir Tom Jones in promoting the 2014 Grand Final. Picture: Nathan Dyer
Source: News Corp Australia

To others (such as Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher, who criticised Sheeran’s “polished pop” in an interview last week), Sheeran’s ascent is baffling, perhaps even offensive to those who hoped the voice of a new generation might be more revolutionary.

In 2012, influential journalist Caitlin Moran tweeted: “If my kids ever tell me they like Ed Sheeran, I’ll put them in a sack and throw them in a canal.”

Sheeran’s response was to sidestep a potential social media spat by sending her “lots of hugs” via Twitter, prompting regret and a grovelling offer of drinks on the part of Moran. Which just goes to show that you never should underestimate the potency of being nice.