Ed Sheeran, fresh off lawsuit victory, celebrates tour opener at AT&T Stadium
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Ed Sheeran was in a celebratory mood Saturday night in front of a packed AT&T Stadium crowd for the opening night of his 38-date North American “Mathematics” tour.
And why not?
Sheeran, 32, just defeated a copyright infringement lawsuit on Thursday, which he addressed a few times throughout the two-hour, 15-minute performance.
Sheeran’s bare, in-the-round stage sat in the middle of the AT&T Stadium floor, surrounded by a thousand general admission fans.
Although bare, the stage was far from minimalist. The outer circle rotated, keeping Sheeran moving each time he left the middle of the stage. The center of the stage, at times, raised him hydraulically. A round video board, which rose from the stage, revealed Sheeran ferociously strumming the fast-moving opener “Equals” from his 2021 release.
Tonight during his tour-opening show at @ATTStadium, @edsheeran made it a point to tell 60,000 that everything we were hearing was being played live. No backing tracks etc.#respect #edsheeran pic.twitter.com/yg6a5LLxuy
— Stefan Stevenson (@StefanVersusTex) May 7, 2023
He wore a simple black T-shirt with “Dallas” in rainbow colors on the front and back, his trademark scruffy ginger hair flopping as he moved around the stage.
His five-piece band was spread out around him, stationed at four points away from the main stage.
“I’ve spent the last two weeks in a courtroom, and this is actually what it’s all about, a connection with people, playing songs,” Sheeran said after “Blow.” “Thank you so much. I’m so proud to be back here in Texas.”
Sheeran evenly mixed his 26-song set with tunes from his five main album releases, including his latest “Subtract,” which came out Friday. He played five songs from each of his past three records, four songs from his second album “Division,” and three from “Plus,” his 2011 debut.
“Now tonight, I’m going to play you some songs that hopefully you know, and if you don’t know, it’s going to be a long awkward two hours for all of us,” Sheeran cheekily said before delivering a frenetic rendition of “I’m a Mess,” from 2014’s “Multiply.”
Early in the show, after his band had left their stations, leaving Sheeran performing alone, he explained to the crowd how he was pulling off a one-man band portion of the set.
Using a loop station, controlled with taps of his foot, Sheeran recorded and looped back different sounds, whether it was a chord progression on one of his many acoustic guitars or a drum pattern from thumping the body of his guitar.
“Everything you hear tonight is completely live; there is no backing track whatsoever,” he said. “It is all made live, on the spot. The way that it works is you press record to make the first loop, press play, and it loops back, and then you can add another layer and another layer,” before singing a scat sound to show off the loop effect.
“I’m going to do a lot of that,” he joked.
It was an appropriate insight ahead of a dramatic version of “Shivers” from “Equals,” which showed off the power of the loop station.
Sheeran told the audience that it still surprises him that a kid from a small British town can tour stadiums in America.
“America was always this place, as an English artist, that you’re kind of like, lots of people have tried, and lots of people have failed,” he said before joking that his first American show in January 2012 was in front of 70 people, who “it turns out, were all English.”
Eleven years later, he’s playing in front of about 70,000 people in Arlington.
He introduced “The A Team,” his first American hit single, as the song that brought him here.
“If you don’t know the words, make them up,” he said charmingly.
The mixed crowd dutifully sang along, especially when Sheeran urged everyone to hold up their cell phone lights several times, creating a sea of twinkling glow from the floor to the highest perches of AT&T Stadium.
The one-two punch of “The A Team” and the stirring “Castle On the Hill” from his 2017 album “Divide” showcased why Sheeran has sold more than 150 albums worldwide.
“15 years old and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, running from the law through the backfields, and getting drunk with my friends,” he sang, channeling all of the best songwriters, from country to rock and roll, with personal references to his youth.
He followed up the new “Curtains,” which he labeled one of the most depressing songs ever, with “probably the least-depressing song in the world,” “Galway Girl,” which showcased fiddler/violinist Alicia Enstrom for a one-song firehouse.
One of the standout moments was the propulsive “Overpass Graffiti,” which sounds like Coldplay doing a song written by The Weeknd in all the best ways, especially when Sheeran hit the falsetto notes.
“I’ve been looking forward to playing this one,” he said before “Thinking of You,” the song in question of a copyright lawsuit by the family of songwriter Ed Townsend, who co-wrote Marvin Gaye’s classic “Let’s Get It On.”
A jury found Sheeran did not engage in willful copyright infringement on Thursday.
Sheeran egged the audience into singing along to his calls of “Yeah!” a perhaps not-so-subtle celebration of his lawsuit victory.
He showed off his Prince-like falsetto during “Sing,” which also gave him a chance to spit out lyrics with the precision of a hip-hop artist.
Arguably his most well-known song, “Perfect,” needed no introduction, and the echo of the entire audience singing along was chill-inducing.
The dark-themed “Bloodstream” highlighted some of Sheeran’s most trance-inducing guitar picking with its relentless chords and gut-punch coda, with Sheeran singing along to his own looped chorus of “all the voices in my mind.” It kept building to a haunting crescendo that made it one of the high points of the night despite its haunting subject matter.
Sheeran recalled opening for Taylor Swift on her “Red” Tour in 2013 at AT&T Stadium and being intimidated by the size and its massive video board (which was incidentally dark for the entire show).“I remember coming here and being like, ‘bloody hell, this place is big,’ and I never in a million years thought I’d get to play it,” he said.
“This honestly has been the weirdest week of my life, and to get to end the week playing music, singing in front of you guys, and having this communal singalong has been amazing,” he said.
“It’s not lost on me that you could be anywhere in the world on Saturday night, and you chose to spend it with me, and I really am grateful,” he said before closing on the main set with “Afterglow.”
Sheeran wore a white Dallas Cowboys jersey with the No. 5, presumably for his fifth album release, for his three-song encore that he performed a song each from his first three records, “Shape of You,” “Bad Habits,” and “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.”
Sheeran’s vocal dexterity shined in the finale, a scornful, spite-filled screed that underscored the guts, tenacity, and thick skin – and perhaps a little bit of animosity from the lawsuit hassle – that an artist such as he must have to rise to the top of the industry at 32.
Ed Sheeran setlist, AT&T Stadium, Arlington, Texas (May 6, 2023)
Tides
Blow
I’m a Mess
Shivers
The A Team
Castle on the Hill
Don’t/No Diggity
Eyes Closed
Give Me Love
Boat
Salt Water
Own It/Peru/Beautiful People/I Don’t Care
End of Youth
Overpass Graffiti
Curtains
Galway Girl
Thinking Out Loud
Love Yourself
Sing
Photograph
Perfect
Bloodstream
Afterglow
Shape of You
Bad Habits
You Need Me, I Don’t Need You
