Video will appear as you scroll through the story
Ed Sheeran · S1 E1
The Boy from Framlingham
Halifax, 1991. A family moves to Suffolk, and a quiet town gets its most famous resident
The vicar at St Michael's Church in Framlingham keeps glancing at the back pew. A four-year-old named Edward Sheeran is singing the hymns correctly, but at roughly twice the volume of everyone else in the congregation.
"Castle on the Hill" (Ed Sheeran, official music video, 2017). Ed wrote this years later, but every frame is about growing up in Framlingham: the castle, the friends, the fields, the feeling of a place so small it fits inside a single song.
Castle on the Hill, Ed Sheeran (2017)
Ed composed "Castle on the Hill" in a single burst after returning to Framlingham for a visit. The production starts with a lone acoustic guitar and builds into a wall of electric guitars and drums that owes more to Springsteen than to pop. In the bridge, Ed names what happened to each of his childhood friends: one works on the farm, one's on his second kid. It's the most personal thirty seconds in his entire catalog.
Sources
Sheeran, Ed. Interview with Zane Lowe, Beats 1 Radio, January 2017.
Mulligan, Mark. "Ed Sheeran: The Biography." John Blake Publishing, 2018.
“My dad was always playing records in the house. Van Morrison, Bob Dylan, Eric Clapton. I didn't know it was special. That was just what you heard when you came home.”
— Ed Sheeran (paraphrased from multiple interviews, 2011-2017)
The Sheeran Household
Ed's father John worked as an art curator and lecturer, his mother Imogen as a jewelry designer and culture publicist. The house in Framlingham was full of art books, vinyl records, and concert posters. They didn't push Ed toward music, but they made sure it was everywhere around him.
Sources
Nolan, David. "Ed Sheeran: A+." Omnibus Press, 2014.
Mulligan, Mark. "Ed Sheeran: The Biography." John Blake Publishing, 2018.
TAP TO REVEAL: What did Ed's brother do with the same musical household?
Framlingham Castle, Suffolk
The 12th-century fortress that towers over the town where Ed grew up. He would later immortalize it in "Castle on the Hill," turning a local landmark into one of the most-streamed songs in history.
Framlingham: The Facts
Nancy Mulligan, Ed Sheeran (2017)
Ed wrote "Nancy Mulligan" about his paternal grandparents: William Sheeran, a Catholic from Wexford, and Nancy Mulligan, a Protestant from Belfast, who married despite fierce opposition from her family. In an episode about where Ed comes from, this track goes one generation further back. The fiddles and acoustic guitar sound like a family photograph turned into a song.
Nancy Mulligan, Ed Sheeran (2017)
"I was twenty-four years old when I met the woman I would call my own." Ed tells his grandfather's love story in first person, as if he's channeling the old man directly. Read the lyrics and you'll see why Ed fights so hard to protect love in his own music: it runs in the family.
Where was Ed Sheeran actually born?
Ed is eleven years old when he catches a music video at four in the morning: just a close-up of a mouth, singing a song called "Cannonball." Next episode: he buys Damien Rice's album O the next day, and nothing is ever the same.
0 XP earned this session