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The Ed Sheeran decade: how the everyman megastar remade music in his own image

The internet-friendly relatability. The pick-and-mix approach to genre. The embrace of streaming to build a global audience. Every step this unassuming musician has taken in his career is now part of the modern pop playbook

Sheeran – who provided the personal touch by Zooming with fans on the release day of his 2021 single Bad Habits, and has long insisted he is essentially no different to his followers – is fluent in this dynamic (one that is partly responsible for solo artists such as himself superseding bands in popularity; it’s harder to foster emotional connection with groups online). Rather than chart hits reflecting divergent tastes and fandoms, a select few songs and artists dominate (particularly those who successfully transitioned from the tail end of the top-down record company and radio-dictated music industry into a viral-hit powered landscape, such as Beyoncé, Rihanna, Harry Styles and Drake). From endless comic-book movies to Elon Musk, the past decade has seen nerds inherit the zeitgeist, and the scruffy, obsessive, slightly awkward Sheeran – who told Graham Norton he once constructed a Lego set on a date – can claim to bea part of that.

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