Why is Ed Sheeran so big

[Seedsy]

Not in a body mass way, as in musical popularity.

Im a 40 year old fart, and i can understand why alot of this modern music malarky is so popular, but not his wet fart music

What's going on here?

[Catalogue Trousers]

Lowest common denominator, innit?

Like so much rubbish pop music of the last - ooh - let's say 25 years or so, his stuff is done to a cookie-cutter aesthetic. It's shamelessly MOR tosh aimed at hoovering up as many sales as possible, just like the vast majority of current chart music in any genre that you'd care to name.

People want nice, predictable wallpaper music - and Sheeran is perhaps the greatest example of that to be currently found.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

Castles on the Hill is good, though, perhaps because it's built on the riff from Love Will Tear Us Apart, or a very similar one.

[Brundle-Fly]

The only thing I find refreshing about Ed's inexplicable popularity is that he isn't a conventionally looking pop idol dreamboat. 

[Inspector Norse]

The only thing I find refreshing about Ed's inexplicable popularity is that he isn't a conventionally looking pop idol dreamboat.

That's part of his appeal though isn't it, look here's a man who looks like a pork scratching making music that sounds like pork scratchings, you too the average Man Eating Medium Sized Fry-Up could be a multi-millionaire and hang out with Taylor Swift and Barack Obama and Leo DiCaprio and whichever Kardashian is on the rota that week if you just strummed a few chords on Youtube and allowed us to advertise all over your page and signed your every waking moment over to us.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I don't think I've knowingly heard him, it's probably impossible that's the case given his supposed ubiquity but that must mean he's sonically completely forgettable, and although I know what he looks like, never seen him in a music video on a pub tv or something, so they must be aesthetically forgettable too.

[chveik]

I don't think I've knowingly heard him

me neither but i do know his albums' titles are atrocious and that he's made a fucking rap album that features among others 50 Cent and Travis Scott which is nuts

[Brundle-Fly]

Des O'Connor used to say (and I'm paraphrasing him here)  "Blandness endures. Why do you think the likes of me, Cilla, Lulu and Cliff have stuck around for so long? We don't make a big splash in a puddle, we are pebbles tossed into a pond, the ripples go out, the ripples go in, forever."

[willbo]

i like Perfect

[purlieu]

I understand the appeal of bland, but I find his music actually difficult to listen to. I've managed to get by with only hearing a few of his songs, but they're unbearably smug and always slightly grating.

I suppose part of the appeal is the faux-authenticity of him - ugly bloke with a guitar and a loop pedal writing love songs - combined with his desire to work with more conventionally commercial artists, which means he avoids falling into either the bland cookie-cutter boyband singer category or the actually musically interesting category, meaning he appeals to the whole mainstream spectrum. There have been a fair few male/AMAB not-very-alternative singer-songwriters over the past decade, the likes of James Arthur and Sam Smith, and why Ed Sheeran has become the most popular is totally beyond me, but I could say that of the charts in general. While 'pop', as a genre, is producing more great music than it has since the '80s, 'pop' as a commercial status has never been so far away from my comprehension than it is today. I received a mystery bag as a freebie when I bought something from the HMV Vault in Birmingham on its opening day, and in there was Sheeran's collaboration album, which had a track featuring Eminem on it. It was one of those eye-opening moments when I realised I had literally no idea what the fuck was going on with mainstream music these days.

Anyway, if I had to ever pick a top ten all time most hated songs, 'Galway Girl' would probably be in there.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Because of all the chemicals farmers put in him.

[Butchers Blind]

It's not challenging is it? Inoffensive radio play, tunes people can sing along in the car to work, nice soundtrack for tiktok vids and simple to find on iTunes. Basically, S4C.

[The Mollusk]

It astounds me that he graduated from the same pool of shite rappers who turned into shite singers like Professor Green and Plan B and yet instead of fading off into the toilet of 2005 like the others he's somehow a global megastar beyond the wildest comprehension.

Most people will listen to whatever the fuck they're told realistically though and that is the simple and honest reason for his success. I think this sort of piss is just an industry experiment in seeing how low they can drop the bar whilst passing it off as "anyone can be a star, even this ugly fuckin creep whose music sounds like chiselling day-old Weetabix off a plastic cereal bowl".

[pigamus]

When I tried to listen to him, it was like, the music that comes on during Spotify adverts, they clagged all that together like fag-end bits of aural soap

[gilbertharding]

If you're having trouble understanding the appeal of a patent sad-sack like Ed Sheeran, I beg of you not to look at Lewis Capaldi, who looks and sounds like an oversized, stuffed Ed Sheeran toy someone has sat on.

BBC4 re-ran that One Hit Wonders at the BBC show on Friday, so I found myself confronted with the JCB Song by Nizlopi from 2005. Just as I was thinking 'Wow - this sounds so much like Ed Sheeran,' the caption ticker told me that he used to be their guitar tech. It has exactly the same stream-of-bollocks lyrics, with the same lack of concern about whether or not they scan or even fit the tune.

Have a butchers at the comments on this fucker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQDnFTtr2UQ

[lankyguy95]

^
Listening to that song again I've found a way to hate it even more - imagine it's James Corden who's singing.

[Head Gardener]

I don't think I've knowingly heard him, it's probably impossible that's the case given his supposed ubiquity but that must mean he's sonically completely forgettable, and although I know what he looks like, never seen him in a music video on a pub tv or something, so they must be aesthetically forgettable too.

+1 (and he can have that as an album title for free)

[Chicory]

'Galway Girl' should be listed as a hate crime.

[JaDanketies]

He's very versatile. He can do the big romance songs and the Justin Bieber-level-hardcore hip-hop numbers, he even did a song with Stormzy. He's stayed on-trend very well and has appeared with enough people to have a lot of credibility. I don't think I much like any of his songs enough but they're always very overplayed when they're released, so they become ear-worms for people who mainly listen to mainstream commercial music. One of his latest smash-hits Bad Habits is probably my favourite from him so far but I still don't think it's as good as a sub-par Bieber song.

[idunnosomename]

BBC4 re-ran that One Hit Wonders at the BBC show on Friday, so I found myself confronted with the JCB Song by Nizlopi from 2005. Just as I was thinking 'Wow - this sounds so much like Ed Sheeran,' the caption ticker told me that he used to be their guitar tech. It has exactly the same stream-of-bollocks lyrics, with the same lack of concern about whether or not they scan or even fit the tune.

Have a butchers at the comments on this fucker: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQDnFTtr2UQ

there's not even much of a tune. There are bits which kind of sound like a melody, but im convinced they wrote the lyrics first then just... sung them.

There's something particularly mawkishly British about the whole thing and "aahhh im not crying ur crying" comments that makes me extra ashamed to be from here.

I mean ill give it a plus for the video but thats it

Edit fuck me. I googled "JCB song shit" and not only was a this blue forum top result, but i heard this song over 15 years ago and had the exact same opinion of it.

You think if you're going to release a song you could at least write a melody before you record it rather than just making it up on the spot like it sounds like he did

At least im consistent.

[the ouch cube]

Singer from Nizlopi is, according to a few seconds of internet search, one of Ed's "three main influences, along with Van Morrison". Who is the third? I couldn't be bothered to find out (J Bieber or Eminem, I bet)

[idunnosomename]

Adolf Hitler

[gilbertharding]

Singer from Nizlopi is, according to a few seconds of internet search, one of Ed's "three main influences, along with Van Morrison". Who is the third? I couldn't be bothered to find out (J Bieber or Eminem, I bet)

The 'One Song to the Tune of Another' round on I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.

[chutnut]

One of his latest smash-hits Bad Habits is probably my favourite from him so far but I still don't think it's as good as a sub-par Bieber song.

This is just the verses from Get the Party Started by Pink with different lyrics!

[idunnosomename]

im getting really annoyed about that jcb song all over again now. it's supposed to autobiographical, right, but there is no way the singer ever rode with his father on a public highway in an excavator. while in theory it is possible in the law to drive construction plant on the road, they'd need to be taxed and insured to do so. and they would require seat belts, especially for a child. fucking shit. and it gave us Ed Sheeran? Terminator time.

[Kankurette]

Galway Girl is a hate crime, and fuck this thread for reminding me that The JCB Song exists. How that pile of beige got to Number 1, I do not know.

Because of all the chemicals farmers put in him.

Ed Sheeran feeds beef burgers to swans.

ETA: the only good thing about that shitty song is the video. And the comments, fucking hell. My dad's dead too but he at least had decent music taste.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Hate all that relatable mundanity in song format shite he does.

I went to the Co-Op to buy a pint of milk and some fags,
When I saw you over there putting out the latest mags.
I would have asked you if you'd like to go see a movie,
But CaB reckons asking out shop assistants ain't groovy.

[idunnosomename]

As dad drove uninsured plant like a cheeky scrote
My bum was vibrating like a bum-faced goat

[Seedsy]

Can i also add, i dont like how he tries to convey he is a singer songwriter. All his songs have about 37 co writers. Now, i happen to believe the best music is written with collaboration, but if you are trying to pass yourself off as a solo troubadour, with nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a loop pedel, i feel he is taking even more piss than he should be.

Jokes on me tho, he is a gazillionaire. I drive a van 6 days of the week.

[Gradual Decline]

Having heard some of his songs, I still have no idea what he sounds like.