TCNJ has a striking celebrity look alike on campus. Meet Sophomore Criminology major Kyle Bailey…or as most people know him: Ed Sheeran.
Bailey’s comparison to singer Ed Sheeran began as he started appearing on TCNJ’s snapchat story, which marked his campus-wide debut. His friends would jokingly post pictures of him captioning them as “Ed Sheeran.” Now wherever he goes on campus, Bailey is often recognized as the celebrity, himself. He sometimes finds himself on TCNJ’s snapchat story from random students’ posts.
A student uploaded photo on TCNJ snap taken while waiting in line to see Josh Peck in Kendall Hall.
The first time Bailey was told he looked like Ed Sheeran was in 2014. “I was over my best friend’s house, and his older brother played an Ed Sheeran song and brought up a picture of him on his computer. Ever since then it has just become more and more common,” he said. In fact, Bailey hears this Ed Sheeran comparasion on a daily basis, “it happens very often, on average once every two days,” he said. When Bailey’s girlfriend Celina D’Alto, is asked who she’s dating, D’Alto always says “he’s the guy who looks like Ed Sheeran,” and it is then that people recognize that she is refering to Bailey. It is not unusual for total strangers to come up to Bailey and compare him to the singer. “People come up to me all the time,” he said, “I usually just laugh and say, ‘Yeah I hear that a lot.’”
Recently, Bailey was out to dinner at Buffalo Wild Wings with some friends. There, a random girl walked up to him asking for an autograph because of how much he looked like Ed Sheeran. Bailey signed his name as the singer’s, remarking that experience as “an interesting first”.
“It’s so common now that the majority of the time a stranger is walking over to me smiling, I pretty much just assume they’re going to call me Ed. Sometimes people don’t walk over to me, I just hear people whisper, ‘Look it’s Ed Sheeran,’” Bailey said. However, being constantly told he looks like Ed Sheeran can get old. “It does get annoying sometimes but overall it’s not that big of a deal. Some people get excited thinking that they’re the first ones to ever point it out, so I just let them have their moment.” Bailey says that the good side of being compared to Ed Sheeran is that he gets to meet a lot of new people. “I just hope that one day people will know me as Kyle Bailey and not as Ed Sheeran,” he said.
Eventually, Bailey would love to meet Ed Sheeran. He regards him as a talented music artist. “My friend joked with me before about going to an Ed Sheeran concert and pretending to be him or pushing our way to the front and try to get him to bring me on stage as his long lost brother.” Bailey recalled. “If I ever got to meet Ed Sheeran I’d be super stoked. We would definitely have to take a #twinning picture. Ed, if you’re reading this, I’m free whenever,” he added.
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