Ed Sheeran: Life and Career
Ed Sheeran was born on February 17th , 1991, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England with is older brother. When he was younger, he struggled with being bullied in school for having a stutter and choosing to wear oversized glasses. He didn’t have very many friends and was often left by himself. As he got older, his love for music grew with him.
At the age of eleven, he was already writing his own songs. At the age 12 his eardrum burst open and he went into surgery. The surgery didn’t go as planned and left him with a lazy eye and severe speech problems. If he were to be talking, sometimes his mouth would freeze up and no words were able to come out. This made the bullying worse at school. He soon found out that this disadvantage didn’t seem to bother him while he was singing, so he continued to sing and write songs.
He started speech therapy, but it wasn’t helping as much as he hoped. He eventually gave up and decided to just deal with the stutter. He went back to writing his own songs, and suddenly his stutter was gone.
He continued to write songs, and eventually discovered YouTube. He created a YouTube channel and started posting videos of him singing some of his songs. At the age of fourteen, he took his guitar and some clothes and left to go to London to start his career as a music artist.
Living on the streets wasn’t easy for Ed. He hardly had enough money to buy food and he always had trouble finding good places to sleep at night. He often found himself sleeping on the sidewalk and under benches. But he didnt let that stop him from singing for other people. He sang in small venues and made his own album. Ed continued to post videos and soon a rapper, Example, found him and invited him to work with him. Ed happily accepted.
After working with Example for a while, Ed started reaching out to more people, but he got no responses. After about two weeks, he finally got a call back and was invited to the stage. He was nervous but sang to the big crowd and after all his songs were sung, he got his very first standing ovation.
James Foxx was very impressed with Ed and let him work in his studio, even letting him sleep on his couch for a little while. After he made it to #2 on iTunes with his new releases, Ed was invited to work with Atlantic Records in their studio. While working with them, he released his new album “+”. It sold over 100,000 copies and became the second best selling album in the United States.
Ed started co-writing with bigger artist like One Direction and Taylor Swift. He even supported Taylor Swift with her 2013 arena tour. His next big success was when his song “I See Fire” was in the movie “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” and his album “X” was ranked as #1 in the United States.
In 2016, Ed decided to take a break from performing so he could work on his new album, “Divide”. In January, he released his two new songs from the album, “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill”. He later released the album and it immediately went viral, with 56.7 million listeners in less than 24 hours. He later released his song “Perfect” which reached #1 on the Billboard Pop Songs.
In December, 2017, Ed was announced to be a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his services of charity and music. After he received the honor from Prince Charles, Ed couldn’t help but cry about the occasion.
His grandfather had died the day he was honored, four years ago, and he felt that he made his grandfather proud. A few weeks after the occasion, he announced that he was going to be getting married to his girlfriend, Cherry Seaborn, right before the new year began.
Ed was often accused for stealing, or copying, others music. In 2017, he was brought to court for copying, note-for-note, the chorus in a song called “Amazing” which was written by X Factor winner, Matt Cradle. He was accused of stealing other songs later on, but was found not guilty.
Ed performed in a gig in Bristol, which ended up raising $40,000 for a charity event. Tickets were given out to people who attended the charity event’s Give it up for One25 campaign, by giving something up for 125 hours. They hit the 40,000 dollar fundraising mark and were able to help out some of the people who were struggling out on the streets.
Ed likes to give away old clothes and things to the homeless and charity shops around his home county. He decided to give away some clothes to the St. Elizabeth Hospice charity in February 2014. In 2016 he donated over thirteen bags of clothes to other charities, and even more after that.
In 2014, Ed made his acting debut, a cameo role as himself on New Zealand soap Opera. In 2015, he appeared as himself in Undateable on NBC. Later that year, he performed as a character he says was a lot like him in Home and Away when he was visiting Australia. He also performed in other things like Foy Vance’s “Make it Rain”, “Sons of Anarchy”, “The Bastard Executioner”, and “Bridget Jones’s Baby”.
In 2019, Ed announced that he was going to be taking a break to possibly start a family with his wife Cherry Seaborn. He said that being on the “Divided” tour was one of his biggest accomplishments, but it was time for him to move on and start a family of his own.
