A Conversation with Ed Sheeran – HuffPost 4.10.12

Mike Ragogna: Ed, you’ve got a new album, Plus. Plus?

Ed Sheeran: You just said it…Plus. It’s ambiguous, you can think of it what you want. Everyone’s calls it Plus, but it’s just a symbol.

MR: Ah, it’s +, okay. Now, it already features a few international hit songs, including “The A Team.” And that recording was a huge record for you. Now, Jaime Fox discovered you?

ES: I went to LA to do a poetry show for my friend John. John hooked me up with loads of other gigs, one of them being The Foxxhole. Markus James’ manager was there, and he said, “Come and play the radio show.” I played the radio show, and he said, “Come and record at my house!” So that was that and it was cool.

MR: You’ve also done a lot of EPs, one of them being your #5 Collaborations. You had some interesting people on that?

ES: Wiley, Devlin, Brett 32, Sway…
MR: Beyond your new album, you’ve had many releases.

ES: Only in England, most of the overseas releases are only singles, too. England’s ahead of the game in that sense.

MR: And you’ve got a hit in the PLUS track “Drunk.”

ES: In England. “Small Bump,” that’s the next single. “Drunk” just peaked at #9.

MR: Let’s go over PLUS’ other singles: “The A Team,” “You Need Me,” “Lego House.” And we’re going to have to talk about “Lego House,” featuring your twin, Harry Potter’s Rupert Grint. How did you pull that off?

ES: Tom Felton, who plays Draco Malfoy in Harry Potter, tweeted about my music, so I got in touch and said thank you. We just got in touch and it got to a point where we’d done a music video for “A Team,” we’d done a music video for “You Need Me,” and it came to “Lego House” and they were like, “We need a cool concept, we need something no one has ever done before.” I was like, “I’ve always wanted to get Rupert Grint to play me in a video, so shall we just get him?” They were like, “No it’ll be too expensive and he won’t have the time.” So I reached out to Tom Felton and asked if Rupert wanted to do it. He was, and he did it for free, and found the date. It was wicked.

MR: You’ve also had success with the group One Direction, who covered your song “Moments.”

ES: Yeah, they were on the X Factor and they’ve done the whole boy band thing worldwide. I think they just came to America, they’re doing a lot here. I lived on my guitarist’s sofa for a long time, and he played guitar for One Direction, so the one guy that I know from One Direction is a guy named Harry who’s the main singer. We just hung out and he said, “We’re putting our album together, can you give us a song?” I had a demo CD with around forty tunes that I was pitching to publishers, so I just gave them that, and that picked that off and they did it.

MR: You’ve got a lot of material and for Plus you’ve recorded and recorded and recorded.

ES: Yeah, I did a fair bit for Plus. But Plus is all demos, to be honest, so it was quite easy to cherry-pick them. They were all the demos that I recorded and when it came time to do the album, I just put it together. It only took a month to properly finish it up.

MR: So your recent singles are basically demos?

ES: “Drunk” was a demo, “…A Team” was a demo, “You Need Me” and “Lego House” were the two we actually worked on, but “Small Bump” was a demo; there’s a song called “Give Me Love,” which is the next single in England, and that was a demo as well.

MR: What’s your creative process like?

ES: It was when I worked at home, but I’m not as prolific now. Usually, lyric ideas come to me and I’ll write loads of things that rhyme with that one sentence. I’ll think of a clever sentence and find those things that rhyme with it. When it comes to putting the song together, I’ll take bits out and put things in, put it to melody.

MR: Things come to you? You’ll be walking down the street and something will pop into your head?

ES: Yeah, pretty much.

MR: So I bet you sing into your cell phone?

ES: I do, actually. It’s a bit embarrassing. I was in the car the other day in Holland. We’d just done a radio thing, we drive in the car, I stopped to have a cigarette, and I just wandered across the road, mumbling away because I didn’t want anyone to hear it.

MR: Dude, everybody does that these days. So you tour with Snow Patrol?

ES: Yeah, it should be great. I did a gig with them in Switzerland with them at the Harlem Stadium, which is the massive venue there, like a radio gig. It was me, Snow Patrol, and Lenny Kravitz. I don’t know why I was on that bill, don’t ask me. It was fun, but I got a note slipped under my dressing room door from Gary from Snow Patrol saying, “We love your album, come and drink with us later.” I’ve been a fan of Snow Patrol for a while, so I went out for a drink with them and then he said, “Look if you’re free, come on the American tour,” so it was really healthy. I’m always quite skeptical about supporters because usually people bite on and it’s favors for other managers and labels, and usually, the bands that open up for them aren’t fans or friends or anything. So to have my first massive tour in America being with people that I actually like as people and I’m a fan of and who share a similar thing with me, it’s going to be good.

MR: A little cross-pollination in the future on each other’s projects maybe?

ES: We’re going to write a lot, yeah. We’re on this for 55 days, so we’ve got time.

MR: Do you have a band?

ES: No.

MR: What’s your stage show like?

ES: When I come to the show, I use a loop-station or beat box.

MR: Nice, so it’s loops. Many people are using it now, and you can see that’s it’s still in the experimental phase with how beats are being expanded on.

ES: I started using it when I was fourteen, which was seven years ago. I experimented with it the first two or three years, and that was when, if you had seen me, you’d have been like, “That isn’t very good.” Literally, I don’t have the new and improved one because the older one I know so well. It’s like having another instrument.

MR: When you’re writing, do you use some of your loops and then write to what you’re hearing in your head?

ES: Very occasionally. If you hear any fast song on a record that I’ve ever done, any hip-hop-y song, that’s usually done with a loop pedal. Any slow song is usually done sitting down with a guitar.

MR: You get certain tattoos while you’re in the States.

ES: Lego Man, yeah. I travel a lot, so that one’s from LA, that one’s from Hamburg, that’s Austin, that’s also Austin, that’s Glasgow, that’s Belfast, that’s New York and that’s New York, and that’s London. I travel a lot, so I get them whenever I feel like it.

MR: Although one might consider you a new artist, what is your advice for new artists?

ES: Write as many songs as possible and even if you write a bad song, you’ve already got an album and you’re never going to write that song again. Learn from your worst songs, learn from your worst gigs, do as many gigs as possible. To be the best in the industry is not about how good your whole product is. For instance, I’m in America now, and technically, America has fifteen of me. There are probably fifteen singer-songwriters who do the same thing. But you need to find that edge; I did gigs every night for three or four years just to perfect my live shows, so if you put me up against any singer-songwriter, I’m not going to sing love songs, I’m going to tear them apart and do a very energetic set like that. You have to find different inroads. If you’re a singer-songwriter, don’t just sing love songs; if you’re a rapper, don’t just rap about the hood. Just find different masts. That’s why André 3000 is so successful because he does whatever the f**k he wants. So find different inroads and take yourself out of your comfort zone. I don’t necessarily always go and play singer-songwriter nights. I’ll play hip-hop nights, comedy nights, poetry nights, and R&B nights. So that’s quite important to do.

MR: And that’s how you were discovered by Jaime Fox, playing that unique venue.

ES: Yeah, but that’s the thing. If I’m an acoustic man, I played an acoustic (set) at SXSW and it was awesome. But all the acts on the bill…I was watching them and I was like, “F**k, this guy’s better than me!” You get to that stage where you’re playing with so many PC guys that you just blend in with them. So the best thing to do is go on bills where you really don’t fit it so you’re either going to fail or you’re going to really succeed. Don’t do a hip-hop night when you’re a fat, ginger kid from England with a guitar, you’re either going to have a really s**t gig or be the stand-up person of the night. So it’s a good risk to take.

MR: And you’re using all the social networks?

ES: I wouldn’t say “using.” I’ve never really used them. When you come from a generation that grows up with them and they’re embedded with you… Nowadays, you see labels say to new acts that you need to get Facebook, you need to get Twitter. It was never like that. I just gradually got a Facebook, gradually got a Twitter, didn’t really want to get them at the time. But you need to get them, so you end up getting them. The labels use them as marketing tools. The reason that people buy (my) records–since you can easily illegally download any album–is that people think I’m a nice person, and they’ve worked that out through Twitter. So it’s not so much a marketing tool, it’s a tool to make your fans get to know you better. Once they know you, they want to support you, that kind of thing.

MR: OK, so what’s down the pike other than the tour for +?

ES: America is huge, so I’m going to be here for a while. I’m going to be doing radio, TV, touring. I’m not going home until it’s done, basically.

MR: Any parting words of wisdom?

ES: Back to the nuances thing. Bill Cosby said something really good back in the day. He said, “I can’t teach you the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.” So just do your own thing and make sure it pleases you.

MR: Thank you very much, Ed Sheeran, and best of luck with the new project.

ES: Thank you.

Transcribed by Narayana Windenberger