Ed Sheeran is very aware of the contradictions at the heart of his superstardom. The first line of his new Disney+ documentary, The Sum of It All, finds the multi-platinum songwriter declaring: “I’m speccy, ginger hair, really short, English, from the countryside, who stutters and beatboxes. That guy doesn’t become a pop star.” Yet 16 Grammy nominations, 14 UK No 1 singles and 150m record sales later, here we are.
His success has brought with it another paradox. For one of the biggest pop stars in the world, Sheeran’s presumably gigantic hardcore fanbase is unusually quiet compared to stans of other superstar acts: Swifties, the BeyHive or the Styles-loving Harries. It’s quite possible that you had no idea they’re known as the Sheerios, a sobriquet that lacks immediate brand recognition. While the documentary shows jubilant fans singing along at his stadium shows, wearing DIY T-shirts bearing the mathematical symbols Sheeran has named his albums after, they rarely get into conflagrations online; unlike Styles, Swift or even Drake admirers, there’s little wider sense of a distinct fan culture with its own language, memes and even infighting.
Perhaps it’s a side-effect of Sheeran’s unapologetic normalcy. He rarely shows up on social media or red carpets or beefs with other artists; the 32-year-old lives quietly with his wife, Cherry Seaborn, and their two infant daughters. Where the likes of Swift and Phoebe Bridgers have engendered deep fan loyalty through hyperspecific lyrical storytelling, Sheeran’s writing tends towards the universal. And while many fans fancy him, he’s never been a conventional pop heart-throb – as he sings in his LA-culture diss track Beautiful People: “We don’t fit in well / Cause we are just ourselves.” In addition, queer culture is a huge driver of contemporary online fandom – stanning representation, revelling in rumours about an artist’s sexuality and questioning queerbaiting – and Sheeran has always appeared straightforwardly heterosexual.
Given that the most prominent stan activity tends to intersect with surveillance and cancel culture – artists who give us plenty to debate, scrutinise and riff on – perhaps it’s no wonder that loyalty to Sheeran doesn’t take up as much online consciousness. For many fans, Sheeran’s normalcy is part of the appeal, and fosters a warmth among his fan community. “I’ve been part of other fandoms, but there is always a jealousy and selfishness involved,” says Klara, a 27-year-old Belgian fan now based in the UK. “Only in Ed’s fandom have I truly felt part of something welcoming.”
Aviral, 22, says he relates to Sheeran “because I’m also that uncool guy – a lot of us fans are. He reached the peak just through hard work, which inspires me a lot. And he always loves us back – he even joined a Zoom call with fans on the Bad Habits release day. Which pop star of his level does that?”
Klara echoes Aviral’s experiences. They first saw him live in a “tiny tent” at Rock Werchter in 2012. Since then, they’ve attended 46 Sheeran concerts and he invited them backstage on the Divide tour. “People judge him by Shape of You or Bad Habits, but when you’ve been a fan for as long as most of us have, you know that his talent and kindness stretches way beyond writing the big pop hits.”
Judging might be the operative word: few pop stars are loved and hated in equal measure as Sheeran, with his many detractors often drowning out the stans. Countless memes have mocked his appearance, his understated wardrobe, his apparent lack of musical inspiration or personality. Last week, Sheeran threatened to quit music for good if he lost a copyright lawsuit over his song Thinking Out Loud, a prospect that many online seemed to relish, positioning Sheeran as a vanilla bore who must be eviscerated in a bid to save “real” music.
Luckily for his fans (and pop music generally), Sheeran won the case. When he gets his schmaltz levels just right – Castle on the Hill, The A-Team, even the wedding anthem Perfect – he is the undeniable prince of the mid-tempo chorus, the inoffensive king of the inter-generational airwaves. So how is it that such a successful artist can still feel so unpopular online? “In my opinion, those people can’t stand seeing a normal guy being successful and remaining loyal to his roots,” says Laura. She founded Instagram account @teddyssquad in 2015, to “fight back against hate comments and correct wrong news”. The account has nearly 32k followers.
“You listen to an Ed Sheeran song and you know it’s an Ed Sheeran song, just from the way he shares his feelings and emotions,” she says. “I saw some lyrics of You Need Me, I Don’t Need You on Tumblr in 2010, found a video of him performing it for SBTV, and I’ve been addicted since then. The numbers speak for themselves; you don’t achieve billions of plays with music that’s truly cheesy and generic.”
That’s another question: Sheeran’s music is so ubiquitous – genre-straddling pop that can live on dozens of different Spotify playlists and radio stations – that it’s hard to tell what proportion of his numbers come from ambient appreciation and what stems from a musical hardcore. Presumably the latter plays a large part: Laura was so moved to support Sheeran in last week’s court case that she flew from Brazil to New York City for the trial.
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“The case enraged me so much because I know Ed is not like that – he’s an artist of integrity,” she says. “So my friend and I decided to show up. I didn’t ask for autographs or try to approach him, all the interactions started with him. I just wanted to be there for our boy, to let him know that whatever the outcome, we knew his pure intentions.”
The jury’s verdict in Sheeran’s favour arrived the day before he released his fifth solo album, Subtract. It offers unprecedented insight into Sheeran’s mindset as he dealt with grief over the death of his best friend, Jamal Edwards, his wife’s diagnosis with a cancerous tumour that couldn’t be treated until after the birth of their second child, and a previous copyright trial over Shape of You. These unvarnished specifics may challenge the relationship that Sheeran has created with fans, as Guardian critic Alexis Petridis wrote in his four-star review of the album: “Whether fans are fascinated by Sheeran per se, or merely Sheeran as a cypher for nice, ordinary people, is an interesting question.”
The second single, Boat, yielded Sheeran’s lowest ever UK chart entry at 46, and while the album is the year’s fastest-selling so far by some way, with 56,000 units reported in today’s midweek chart figures, that number pales in comparison to the equivalent first-week midweeks for his 2021 album = (Equals), with 84,000, and 2017’s Divide, which moved 232,000 units in its first day and ultimately ended its first week with 672,000, giving Sheeran the third-biggest opening week ever. Even among hardened Reddit Sheerios, enthusiasm for the album seems to be split between those who have experienced grief and those who have not. In the Disney+ documentary, Sheeran characterises grief as the yardstick of maturity. He also acknowledges the potential difficulties of Subtract’s reception – and says he couldn’t care less.
For Klara, Sheeran’s decision to release this album represents trust between him and his fanbase. “We know he had to go through a lot to write this album, so the fact that he feels comfortable enough to be vulnerable with his fans to release it is very special.”
But Laura echoes Seaborn’s concerns in the documentary that Sheeran – whose US tour spans the whole summer – hasn’t given himself time to heal and that his commitment to his fans might even prove an obstacle to his recovery. “I do think he’s too hard on himself,” she says. “Even though he’s dealing with his own struggles, he still engages with us. It’s OK to stop sometimes and rearrange your thoughts – we understand he’s just as human as us.”