Spoiler alert – despite my best efforts this post contains some profanity and scenes of an adult nature.
Ooo wa, ooo wa, ooo wa, ooo wa, I’m in love with your body. Sweet Jesus. Am I the only person that thinks Ed Sheeran is a load of crap? I can’t be, surely. I mean he’s selling more records than every other artist ever in the world put together but that means absolutely nothing in talent terms. Does it? The answer in case you were struggling is a resounding no. His music has absolutely no value whatsoever, in any sense or on any level (except it has notes in it of course, I’m not THAT stupid) but that’s not what’s alarming. Many things have no value and we just drift around getting on with our lives but the trouble with Ed Sheeran and his music is that they’re both almost incalculably shit. Oh, and everything he does makes me want to punch a spike.
Popular music has a long history of mixing good and bad. I love Elvis (not Costello) but he made some dreadful records. So have The Beatles, The Bee Gees and Elton John but I have a lingering respect for all of them. Dylan, Bowie and Miles Davis are three of the very best but they’ve released some utter bollocks too. But nothing comes close to Ed. Frankly I’d sooner live on a diet of Cheryl whoever and One Direction such is my robust contempt of him. Even Leo Sayer and The Wurzels could top him. I’ve tried for quite a few weeks to work out precisely what it is about Sheeran that vexes me so but to be honest I think it’s the whole package. I can’t stand his stupid urge to cover as much of his body with tattoos, presumably to remind himself of all the amazing experiences he’s had, sitting round campfires with a sack of dim-witted sycophants. A clue Ed – remembering stuff is what the memory is for. Of course at some point when you’re older you’ll actually lose your memory and will sink into torture as you try to figure out why you’re covered in questionable artwork.
I don’t like the ‘boy next door’, ‘down to earth’, ‘normal bloke’ rubbish either. When you’re down to earth you don’t brag on about how you’ve got a five year plan and only really want to break Adele’s record sales. That’s vain and greedy and creepy all at once and you know who else had a five year plan? Most genocidal maniacs, that’s who. I hate the way he’s jumped on every bandwagon and on the back of every other artist he bumps into just to shove his records down as many throats as possible. It’s like sex in prison, no one asks for it but you still get something unpleasant and hard to swallow anyway. He wants you and your money and he’s happy to prance around like some jester prick with anyone he can find. You do understand that if you didn’t pay he would stop, don’t you? Then there’s the story of how he got a cut on the cheek at a party with Princess Beatrice and James Blunt as if that’s somehow a cool way to get a cut. Personally I think the cut was a few inches too high and a few inches too shallow but maybe that’s being overly harsh. Or maybe it’s not.
When it comes to Ed Sheeran the only thing I don’t care about is that he’s ginger and wears glasses (although in this most recent gangbang of publicity he wears them in a very ‘look at me, I’m wearing glasses but normally I don’t so I’m just like you’ kind of way that’s so irritating it makes me itch at night) and that’s because I’m ginger and wear glasses. It doesn’t give me any sense of brotherhood though.
And finally, if you feel I’m being horribly irrational and unfair let’s just look at the artistry, though in reality his artistry is no more enjoyable than a fourth rate Punch and Judy show on Margate beach. In a fucking gale. I don’t own a single note of his music but I don’t have to because I have a radio and TV and every time I turn them on he’s there. In the last month alone I’ve seen the end of my nose fewer times than I’ve seen him. He excels at scratching away at his guitar with another limited variation on a singular limited theme and the lyrics are nothing short of appalling. He seems cursed to write from the perspective of a 12 year old simpleton. He’s spent three whole albums chiming about been young and having girlfriends and jumping and skipping and eating toast and going for a poo and opening a fridge and smelling stuff and not one word is interesting and I’m now about 4 seconds away from setting fire to this laptop. What’s even more remarkable are the figures. The baffling number of people who actually think he’s the best thing since fire. People, some grown ups, who will pay money to go and see him, who will fantasize about him or dab a tissue to their eye as he thinks out loud to articulate something marginally less profound than a hamster fart. I always knew that Adele was over-rated but Ed Sheeran is so far beyond over-rated he isn’t coming back. He is a stain on all our tastes and, I would humbly argue, among the very, very worst things to have happened to music in a long, long, long, long time.
And that includes Robbie Williams, King of Leon, Bono and The Black Eyed Peas.
Rant over and I DO feel better.
G B Hewitt. 18.3.2017
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 