Wag-gingity-gwan! Ed Sheeran shows ’em how to strum

ED SHEERAN. Remember the name. He’s the (relatively) new boy of UK music. And he’s good. Very, verrrrrrry good. He signed for Atlantic at the turn of the year, and will be releasing his new album in the autumn; the first song off that album to be released was out on Sunday, and all this week he’s been talkin’ to the papers, tourin’ the airwaves and feelin’ the love.

Last night, he was live in session on Geoff Lloyd’s Hometime Show (33:35-48:40) on the home of live music, Absolute Radio, talking about his background, influences and future. In sum, he used to play the cello, first picked up a guitar at 11, started writing music at 13, has been releasing music since 14, is 20 now, is ginger, from Suffolk (though born in Halifax), “kind of hippyish” and “went to a normal comprehensive school”.

On the substantive, the music, he said:

“I did have really terrible music taste in primary school and then my dad kind of got me out of it, and got me into Dylan and Damian Rice... I owned a couple of Slipknot CDs and Limp Bizkit and I was really into Kerrang and heavy metal and stuff... I think I had a Stepz CD actually...

“[My dad’s] a big fan of Dylan and Van Morrison and the Beatles and stuff like that... [I was inspired by] Eric Clapton actually. I saw Eric Clapton at the Queen’s jubilee play Layla and I was like that’s a sick song, I wanna learn that.”

And here’s what he said when quizzed on his new record deal:

You’ve just signed for Atlantic - any attempts to mould you or suggest you do things a certain way?

“Not at all, no, ’cos I achieved a certain amount of independent success before I signed, I kind of signed off the back of having a large fan base and a good touring audience and was basically just allowed to go in the studio and make the album that I wanted to make, which is really cool.”

That's such a luxury though isn’t it?

“Yeah, it’s good, it’s really, really nice and its kind of paid off ’cos the single’s out now and it’s kind of, it’s, it’s doing alright.”

And you chose which song came out as a single?

“Yep, and how the video was done and everything.”

Phenomenal!

Just the word to describe his live acoustic rendition of You need me; listen to the mastery and feel the buzz, feel the passion, feeeeeeeeel the noise:

Oh. Yeah! Listen up all you reality show wannabes: that’s what you call talent, that’s what you call class, that’s what you call music.

• Ed Sheeran official website
• Ed’s MySpace page