Ed Sheeran Live in Cape Town

I can’t believe it has already been a week since I watched Ed Sheeran perform live at the Greenpoint Stadium. I’ve been singing all his songs nonstop and reminiscing to others about how incredibly talented he is (much to everyone’s annoyance). Don’t despair if you weren’t able to attend the concert – I’ve become pretty good at discussing it in all its glory.

The first thing I’d like to point out is that the stage set was unbelievable. Digital displays of various colours and imagery lit up the stadium. Each song was accompanied by its own display: for example, for the song titled Bloodstream, the display was made up of rhythmic red explosions that moved pretty much to the beat of the music. The atmosphere was hugely impacted by this as the audience felt engulfed by the performance. I was standing in Golden Circle, and during this display I could have sworn everyone around me was painted red. I was swimming in Ed Sheeran’s bloodstream, no lie.

Did you know that Ed Sheeran creates all of his music by himself on something called a loop pedal? Neither did I. A loop pedal allows an artist to record a replica of their instrumental or vocal sound to be played back on repeat by the tapping of the foot. So before each song properly began, Ed would record a variety of layered sounds using his voice and his guitar to create the background music for what he was about to sing. His voice would create harmonies, and with his guitar he created drumming sounds as well as strums and melodies. Once his recording was complete, Ed performed the song with his foot constantly tapping at his loop pedal to switch between verses and choruses. The man is crazy talented to say the least.

His stage presence was quite different to what I had expected. I had imagined a relatively shy Ed sitting on a stool on stage singing into his microphone and playing his guitar. I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was constantly interacting with the audience: he chatted to us; give us melodies with which to sing along to his music; encouraged us to dance; and even sympathised jokingly with whom he referred to as “the boyfriends and super-dads”. He was funny and entertaining and all-round beautiful – what I’d give to have a beer with Ed Sheeran.

An incredible experience was when, for one of his slower songs, Ed asked the audience to shine their phone torches into the air. As I was standing in golden circle I was able to turn around and get a full 360 view of this. There were too many tiny little lights shining for me to count, and I can imagine that another huge portion of people didn’t shine their torches at all. This really put into perspective how enormous the crowd was, and I can only imagine that a moment like that is incredibly emotional for a performer. I found it emotional and none of those lights were even shining for me!

I have never been a bigger fan of Ed Sheeran than I am today. He didn’t sing off-pitch once and his vocal range is unreal – the man can hit higher notes than Celine Dion, I swear. If you weren’t fortunate enough to watch one of his performances in Cape Town, I hope that this blog post was able to give you a slight indication of how truly breath-taking it was. Feeling jealous?

I know this piece was slightly different from what I usually post, but I just had to share this story. As of next week I’ll be back to sharing stories of Cape Town talent. Thanks for indulging my fangirling.