Ed Sheeran at the Air Canada Centre

Photographs by Sean Chin.

The great thing about an Ed Sheeran concert isn’t his obvious talent, but the way he captivates his audience with his beautiful soul. The British singer-songwriter swayed Toronto’s Air Canada Centre with his regular-guy charm and repertoire of brilliantly crafted songs. 

I’ve been to many concerts, but an Ed Sheeran show always leaves me speechless. He walks on stage with such confidence and it’s not cocky. He greets the crowd with a genuine smile. Armed with just a guitar, couple of microphones and his looping pedals, Sheeran begins to create his masterpiece.  A chunk of his set spotlights his latest release, X (pronounced “multiply”), but he squeezed in the obvious gems from +. His backdrop included a cluster of clips from his music video and special effects of his live performance.

The fans showed their admiration for the singer with signs, tears, and screams of “I love you Ed”.  Of course, they were endless sing-along to all the favorites.  While Sheeran has a choir boy side which is shown in songs like “Lego House”, “Thinking Out Loud” and “Photograph”, he isn’t afraid to showcase his hip-hop alter ego.  Sheeran illustrated his rhyming skills with “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” and “Don’t” which featured a snippet of Blackstreet’s “No Diggity”. For his encore, he did an amazing cover of Drake’s “Know Yourself”. If there’s a rap album in Sheeran’s future, I would gladly accept it.

He finished out strong with the Pharrell-produced track, “Sing”, that once again had the entire arena jamming.  Sheeran knows how to entertain a crowd with just a couple of cords and his soulful voice. His music ability knows no bounds. I’m still wowed by his mash up of “I See Fire” and Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good”. Sheeran returns to Toronto in September and I hope to have a front row seat!