Before I get into this, I have to preface by telling you I wasn’t the biggest Ed Sheeran fan. His music was good, but after his first album, I stopped listening to him except when his songs became popular on the radio. Last Christmas however, my parents bought my husband and I tickets to see Ed play at Tampa. This excited my husband as he loves his music, but as for me, I was pretty unphased at the idea of seeing him live.
Fast forward to after the concert has passed and all I can say is ,“Wow.”
He Doesn’t Play with a Band?!
So, I’ve been to my share of concerts—I went to Bonnaroo back in 2013, and I’ve seen Paul McCartney (of the Beatles) four times, plus countless other concerts. All of these concerts have one thing in common: a band. I was not aware that Ed Sheeran didn’t play with a band, nor a backing track until I got to the concert and began watching him perform. He showed the concert-goers all the various foot pedals that he uses to record and loop what he plays, and that everything that we heard came from the stage was completely live. This blew my mind. I’ve seen some very talented people in concert, but nobody quite compares to what I witnessed on stage as Ed played his hour and half-long set full of pure talent and energy.
He’s Beyond Energetic.
Ed Sheeran knows how to perform and knows how to get the crowd involved. He started the concert off explaining how as a concert-goer himself, he never gets very active in the dancing or singing out loud, but he said as an entertainer that he wanted every person dancing and singing—and if you noticed people around you not doing that then to do so louder. Being as the concert was at the Raymond James Stadium, voices echoed for what I can only imagine was miles. It was beautiful and made it feel as though the crowd was unified in a mystical type of way.
He’s Full of Surprises.
Since I had these tickets for nearly a year, a lot of things happened between those two dates. One thing that greatly impacted me was the sickness and then death of my grandmother over this past summer. She struggled with cancer before, and when it came back the second time she just wasn’t able to fight it back as hard. During her funeral, my aunt picked the song “Supermarket Flowers” (by Ed Sheeran) as the final song before we said our goodbyes, unknowing that I was going to see him in concert. Before the concert, I checked the set list of every show he had done this year to ensure he wasn’t going to play that song, and he hadn’t played it once. But after a few songs, he said that he doesn’t normally play “Supermarket Flowers” because of how sad it is, but he just felt as though he needed to play it. This surprised me and caught me so off-guard. I shed a few tears but thought about how my grandmother was probably looking down on me and telling me to get over it and enjoy my time there—so that’s exactly what I did for the rest of the concert.
Ed Sheeran may be the best performer of our generation, and if you get the chance to see him—regardless if you’re his fan or not —take the chance, and you won’t be disappointed even in the slightest.
Images all taken by the author.