SHUT UP ED SHEERAN

I originally hated Ed Sheeran. My 'cool' friends were going mad over this guy (forgetting he wrote songs for One Direction) whilst I was getting excited about Kraftwerk's return, but I tried to put all taste aside so I could listen to his first album: + with open ears. I still hated it. I hated how Ed sounded so pleased with himself whilst singing about a prostitute dying of drug addiction in The A Team. I hated how he promised to be there for some person in Lego House without actually saying how he'll support this person (though, the music video is actually really clever). I hated the swagger he tries to convey in You Need Me I Don't Need You whilst sounding as nasally and out of his league as Vanilla Ice.

"I can feel it calling in a class-A drug addict."

Now, I was taught never to make fun of someones appearance - which is a shame because making fun of someones appearance is easy. It's much harder to make jokes about Donald Trump's personality than his hair, but I've always believed that to be a good writer you must constantly challenge yourself. Many of my friends look ridiculous, but not everyone can be as eye-hemorrhagingly gorgeous as me can they? A person's art has nothing to do with their appearence, so if I'm judging a person's art then I will mock only their art.

But Ed Sheeran is no David Bowie. Despite the hilarious Phil Collins-inspired cover art to + trying to tell us otherwise, Ed doesn't have the power to make all the women swoon and all the men very confused. That doesn't mean he can't be a ladies man. Mick Jagger is no David Bowie either, but he was able to sell the whole 'sex god' thing because he sounded simultaneously primal and effortless. Ed's just trying so hard, to the point he's trying to make women fall in love with him by singing about class-A drugs. "Oooh, look how pretty her skin is as needles full of heroin stick out of it. It reminds me of you." This is like if Smelly Cat was written by Ross in a despeate attempt to get with Rachel again. Or if Podrick used The Rains of Castamere to seduce Brienne of Tarth.

Then Sing hit and my brain crashed.

All my 'cool' friends went mysteriously quiet. Either they'd moved onto the next white young man trying to seduce women - or their indie messiah had gone too 'mainstream' for them. Ed was back, and he was back with percussion and a baseline. It was a combination of having more than one person in the studio with him and Ed dropping his coy act that made Sing work. For me, at least. I thought it was one of the best songs from last year. It's like when Bruno Mars, a whiny doofus, out of nowhere produced Uptown Funk. It's such a drastic shift upwards in quality from Mars's other work that I think everyone got whiplash.

Pharrell: Making other people cooler since 1998

Then Don't hit and it's my favourite song from last year. I didn't think I would ever be able to dance to an Ed Sheeran song, which is perplexing considering that this and Sing proves Ed should just make R&B from now on. And he's now singing about betrayl and jealously - things we, unfortunately, experience far more than love.

It's perfect that Sheeran's second album is called x (Multiply) because it mutliplies his talent by the thousands. Though, he's kinda roped himself into a corner with this trend of naming albums after mathematical functions. I doubt his third album will be called 'Subtract' or 'Divide.' Maybe he could call it 'Squared' or 'Cubed,' but even then it's not as much.

Then Thinking Out Loud hit, and once again I hated Ed Sheeran. If Don't was mutliply, then this is square root. The smug, 'please go out with me' attitude is back, as is the all around lazy songwriting. And, of course, it's Ed's biggest hit to date. It's one of those songs that comes out in January and then never goes away for the rest of the year. Imagine if Rolling In The Deep sucked, and you have what listening to the radio is like.

If you've ever tried studying writing, then the first thing a teacher will tell you is that the opening line is the most important line. This is of course false (it's actually the opening chapter that matters), but the point is that you need to make a good first impression otherwise people won't read on. Thinking Out Loud probably has one of the worst opening lines I've heard in a while.

"When your legs don't work like they used to before."

The reason why I've written this blog post is because of this one line. I've had to hear this one line for eight months whenever I turn on the radio, and its always made me turn the radio off - even when I'm driving and shouln't take one hand off the wheel whilst doing a sharp turn. If I crash one day, I'm blaming Ed Sheeran.

YOU FORGOT THE PUNCTUATION

This sentence is lazy and henious because it uses the words: "used to before." These three words simply do not work together. Why? Because "used to" means the same thing as "before." It refers to a past event. "Used to before" would only work if it there was more to follow this sentence, like: "used to before I ran them over whilst trying to turn this song off."

This lyric would work if it was just "like they used to." The song hardly has a rhyme structure, and the first sentence doesn't - it's not like Ed put in 'before' just to rhyme with the next sentence. He put 'before' in because he wanted two extra sylables, which is dumb because precisely how many two syllable words are there in the dictionary again? He could've chosen any word, and he chose the word that means exactly the same as the two words before it. It's like if I said: "I wrote a retrospective that reflects." The sentence would make sense if I said "that reflects how stupid this song is" afterwards, but I didn't. I shouldn't have to give the sucessful singer/songwriter English lessons.

Also, Thinking Out Loud doesn't contain any thoughts being spoken out loud. The phrase 'thinking out loud' refers to a person's internal monologue being recited word for word. It's a stream of concious that hardly ever makes coherent sense. Granted, the lyrics to Thinking Out Loud make little sense, but they're coherent. They're almost identical to so many other songs.

Shut up, and go back to school Ed. Clearly Sing, Don't and Bloodstream were written by other people, or else the spirit of Jimi Hendrix visited you one Christmas to grant you three good songs. That's the only way I can explain your sudden spike in brilliance follwed by such a disasterous crash.

Image Sources: 

http://www.allmusic.com/artist/ed-sheeran-mn0002639628

http://www.metcomusic.net/2014_12_14_archive.html

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/thinking-out-loud/