Cheekier viewers than me might wonder how this Disney+ documentary is going to manage to fill out an entire four-part series about the singer. Sheeran is massive, the biggest male pop star in the world, capable of selling out – as he does here – Wembley Stadium for the 12th time. Each of his albums goes to No 1; he’s played at practically every massive arena in the world. He sings with Eminem on stage; Beyoncé will perform with him. But if you only know about his life from the tabloids, or by gossip osmosis, you might know he has a pub, that he married a school friend, that he still lives in Suffolk, and has a pond that was briefly controversial. As a star, he is not so much champagne as he is pale ale. He has a homely quality to him.
This homeliness belies a certain unknown aspect, though. Not unknown in the Beyoncé way, with that distant remove of a glossy machine, but unknown in the sense that his normal-guy shtick might be the extent of it. We see him as a hard worker done good. He appears to be a very nice man. The documentary – which, again, cheekier viewers might note, coincides with a high-profile court case against him, and does much to make him seem even more human and likable – foregrounds the unknown man, via the people who do know and love him, including his wife, Cherry, and his parents, John and Imogen.
Episodes are given a title – ranging from “Love” to “Loss” – and each packs a surprisingly hefty emotional punch. This seems to come as a shock to Sheeran as much as anyone else. At first, he admits, he thought it would be a documentary about the making of his fifth solo album, Subtract, which is due out at the end of this week. But life came at him. On a date night, his wife, Cherry, reveals what made them agree to do a film in the first place. When pregnant with their second child, she was diagnosed with cancer. For a time, doctors were worried that it was “really bad”. In facing her own mortality, she wondered what her legacy might be, if she were to die. Sheeran wondered the same. “He wants to say to people, I’m not just this music machine, I’m not just this robot that has to get to No 1,” she says.
There is a bit of the robot getting to No 1, but there is far more personal stuff than you might expect. We get the story of his rise to fame, and how it tipped from word of mouth and online exposure to playing on breakfast TV in America. There are home videos of Sheeran as a kid. “I’m speccy, ginger hair, really short, English, from the countryside, who stutters and beatboxes … that guy doesn’t become a pop star,” he says, at the start. But he did become a pop star, and then some. Sheeran’s confidence in his abilities and talent is absolute, even at the age of 15.
Labels weren’t yet interested, but a young entrepreneur called Jamal Edwards put him on his YouTube channel, SBTV, and after a song called The A-Team appeared online in 2010, his rise to fame was set in stone. The two were best friends, and for a time, Sheeran moved in with the family. Much of The Sum of It All is also about Edwards, who died horribly young in 2022. Sheeran says he writes songs “as therapy”, but when he comes to perform the songs he has written about Edwards, at a secret show in London, he breaks down, more than once. He berates himself afterwards, for not being more of an entertainer that night. His wife says she is worried about his mental health. You can certainly see a man who deflects, through jokes, or with generalities.
There are elements of the traditional pop- or rock-doc here. Life on the road can be gruelling and lonely. It isn’t an unfamiliar notion, but it is still surreal to see a man performing in front of tens of thousands of screaming, adoring fans, only to come back to a dressing room, completely alone. It is hard to be away from his wife and children.
For fans of his music, there is lots of behind-the-scenes footage, from rehearsing with Stormzy at Wembley to writing the songs that will make up Subtract. But for more general viewers, there is plenty of heart, and his openness about his grief and pain feels important. Come to a documentary about Ed Sheeran for the pop; stay for an intimate look at marriage, loss and mental health.
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Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All is on Disney+ from 3 May.