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Ed Sheeran · S1 E2
O
An eleven-year-old hears Damien Rice and decides exactly what he wants to do with his life
It's four in the morning, and eleven-year-old Ed Sheeran is watching a music video on late-night TV: a close-up of a mouth singing a song called "Cannonball." The next day, he buys the album.
"Photograph" (Ed Sheeran, official music video, 2015). The video uses actual home footage of Ed growing up: birthday parties, family holidays, childhood performances. In an episode about discovering music as a kid, this is the song where Ed looks back at exactly that.
Photograph, Ed Sheeran (2014)
Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol co-wrote "Photograph" with Ed, and the production stays deliberately sparse: just guitar, voice, and a gentle rhythmic pulse. The melody never reaches for a big key change or a dramatic chorus. It stays in the same emotional register the entire time, trusting the words to carry the weight. That restraint is the most Damien Rice thing Ed has ever done.
Sources
McDaid, Johnny. Interview with Songwriting Magazine, 2015.
Mulligan, Mark. "Ed Sheeran: The Biography." John Blake Publishing, 2018.
The Blueprint
Damien Rice's O didn't just give Ed a favorite album. It gave him a blueprint: one artist doing everything alone, writing, singing, playing guitar, no band, no production tricks. That was the model Ed would follow for the next twenty years.
Sources
Nolan, David. "Ed Sheeran: A+." Omnibus Press, 2014.
“I listened to that album and I physically couldn't do anything else. I just sat on my bed for the entire thing. When it finished I pressed play again. I must have done that every day for a month.”
— Ed Sheeran (paraphrased from multiple interviews, 2011-2017)
TAP TO REVEAL: Why did O matter more than any other acoustic album?
The Sheeran Living Room, Framlingham
On June 3, 2002, eleven-year-old Ed watched Eric Clapton play "Layla" at the Queen's Golden Jubilee concert on TV. Two days later, he bought a black Stratocaster copy for £30. The living room where he first heard that guitar sound is where the career started.
Ed's Musical DNA
Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran (2014)
"Tenerife Sea" is the most Damien Rice-influenced track in Ed's catalog. Intimate, acoustic, barely there. The production breathes instead of pushing. After hearing how Rice's O rewired Ed's brain at eleven, listen to this and you'll hear the direct lineage: a voice, a guitar, and nothing else getting in the way.
Tenerife Sea, Ed Sheeran (2014)
"You look so wonderful in your dress, I love your hair like that." Ed opens with the simplest observation in the world and makes it sound like a revelation. The lyrics read like someone trying to freeze a single moment in place. Damien Rice could have written these lines.
Which album inspired eleven-year-old Ed Sheeran to pick up a guitar for the first time?
There's one problem Ed can't solve with a guitar: a stutter so severe he can barely finish a sentence at school. Next episode: his dad brings home another CD, this one by Eminem, and it fixes everything.
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