![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The kids who like him do indeed appear to have spent the last few years ignoring the sclerotic conformity of the music industry – but have been listening instead to something that sounds exactly like it could have been released by a major record company. The kind of person who once believed the internet would give keen-eared kids the opportunity to break free of the stifling conformity of the music industry and alight on new sounds too groundbreaking, confrontational and futuristic for cautious record companies to countenance might let out a little yell of horror at Sheeran's rise. Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran brings some sunshine to the Guardian studios with a live version of his single Lego House .uk He has arrived in the charts already a star, thanks to his own tireless efforts to build a fanbase without the aid of pluggers and press officers: a punishing live schedule that involved playing more than 300 gigs in 2009 alone, six self-released EPs and three albums in the last six years, the last – an album of collaborations with various UK rappers, with whom he shares a love of rapid-fire lyrics and slightly clunky pop-cultural similes ("on cold days cold plays out," he sings on Drunk, "like the band's name") – managing to muscle its way into the lower end of the album chart. His success this year has seemed phenomenal, soundtracked by screaming girls: You Need Me rocketed straight into the top three, while its predecessor, The A-Team, a lachrymose portrait of a young drug-addicted prostitute, spent three months in the top 10. Then again, you can understand his bullishness. It all seems a little at odds with Sheeran's likably unassuming image: on his website, he offers retail space to liquorice allsort-themed jewellery designed by his mum. He pours scorn on other artists given a leg-up into the charts by songwriters-for-hire or the munificence of the BPI: "Don't need another wordsmith to make my tunes sell … my shit's cool … I didn't go to Brit School." ![]() F rom the title down, his current hit You Need Me, I Don't Need You presents 20-year-old singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran as a very cocksure customer indeed. ![]()
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