Just because Ed Sheeran, is only 20 years old but is already one hell of a story! We don’t know where to start; with his amazing song Little Lady together with Mikill Pane, his age of only 20, his intens lyrics, the way he beated James Morrison, his sofa surfing story, his going on my own to LA story or his collaborations with almost all big grime artists.
In April 2010, after leaving his old management company, he bought a ticket to LA, with no contacts other than one poetry night. He played open mic nights all over LA, before being spotted by Jamie Foxx who invited him to stay at his house and record for the rest of his stay. Throughout 2010, Sheeran’s fan-base grew incredibly by YouTube, together with also getting credit from The Indepent newspaper, England football captain Rio Ferdinand and even Elton John.
On 9 January 2011, Sheeran released his final independent EP, No.5 Collaborations Project featuring appearances by lots of grime artists. With this EP, Sheeran gained mainstream attention for reaching number 1 in the iTunes chart without any promotion or label, selling over 7,000 copies in its first week.
His first headline tour around the UK sold out in a matter of hours.
One of his other hits is his cover of Jamie Woon – Wayfaring Stranger .
Want to know what it's like to be 35? ... Just listen to Birdy
Hometown: Lymington, Hampshire. The lineup: Jasmine van den Bogaerde (vocals).
The background: Birdy is the 15-year-old singer-songwriter whose cover version of Bon Iver's Skinny Love reached number 17 in the charts in March this year. Actually, she was 14 when it charted – ancient compared to Rebecca Black, but still pretty young. We didn't write about her then because Skinny Love was the only song available by her at that point and we weren't sure whether it was enough to draw any conclusions about her as an artist. There was actually one other song – So Be Free, with which she won, in 2008, the UK talent contest Open Mic UK, beating 10,000 entrants in both the under-18s category and the grand prize. There, already some of the Birdy "style" is in place, if you compare the 12-year-old singing her own composition at the piano and the slightly older young woman singing Skinny Love in the moody video directed by Sophie "Ellie Goulding/Sade" Muller: it is, to cite one of the categories often used by musicians on MySpace, an example of "melodramatic popular song". She manages, using just voice and piano, to make Justin Vernon's plaintive paean sound like something Andrew Lloyd Webber might have penned for Elaine Paige. You can tell a lot about an era from its teen pop stars. Thirty-five years ago, a typical girl (pun intended) of around the same age as Birdy might have been like Ari Up – fierce, outspoken, colourful, an extraordinary burst of energy and opinions, afflicted with a kind of joyous juvenile dementia. Now, they seem prematurely old, wise, sensible and sophisticated types suffering from a sort of sorrowful knowingness – singers such as Adele appear to have bypassed adolescence completely and gone directly to young adulthood. Adele is clearly one of Birdy's role models, and going by her two releases to date, she offers a glimpse of what it must be like to be 15 these days, and suggests it must be quite like being 25, or even 35.
It's like going back to the pre-rock'n'roll era, to a time before teenage was invented. The fact that she's covered songs by Bon Iver and the xx is a bit of a red herring: it gains her access to another niche market – ie the indie demographic – but it's not what she's about. What she's about is a sombre showtunefulness, and she does it well. If you thought Skinny Love was a triumph of still silence, you should hear Shelter. There are no signs of dubstep here, no electronics – save for some ambient tones and textures towards the end. No, it's pure Judie Tzuke revisited. It may lack the original's eerie drama and stifling ambience but, enhanced by the penumbral atmosphere of the video, it has a haunting quality all its own, even if it does make you mourn a little on Birdy's behalf for her lack, or loss, of youthfulness.
The truth: She will succeed, even if her success might make you sad.
In April 2010, after leaving his old management company, he bought a ticket to LA, with no contacts other than one poetry night. He played open mic nights all over LA, before being spotted by Jamie Foxx who invited him to stay at his house and record for the rest of his stay. Throughout 2010, Sheeran’s fan-base grew incredibly by YouTube, together with also getting credit from The Indepent newspaper, England football captain Rio Ferdinand and even Elton John.
