Ed Sheeran

Ed Sheeran is one of the best-selling musicians of the 21st century, a singer-songwriter who built a global career on acoustic guitar, a loop pedal and a gift for melodies that cross genres. Born Edward Christopher Sheeran on February 17, 1991, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk, he blends folk, pop, R&B and hip-hop into songs that range from intimate ballads to stadium anthems. With more than 200 million records sold, four Grammy Awards and the highest-grossing concert tour ever staged, Sheeran turned a solo act with one guitar into a worldwide phenomenon.

A teenager with a guitar

Sheeran joined his church choir at four and began learning guitar young, and he has said he decided to become a performer around age eleven after watching the Irish musician Damien Rice play live. He started writing songs soon after, self-released a string of EPs as a teenager, and moved to London to chase a career, playing hundreds of shows in small clubs and opening for established acts across many genres. His breakthrough came in 2010 with a viral performance of “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” on the UK platform SB.TV, which showed off his mix of hip-hop rhythm, acoustic guitar and live looping. He signed with Atlantic in 2011.

Plus, Multiply and Divide

Sheeran built his catalogue around albums titled with mathematical symbols. His debut, + (Plus), arrived in 2011 with the hit “The A Team.” His second album, x (Multiply), became his first number one in 2014, and its single “Thinking Out Loud” won Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance. Then came ÷ (Divide) in 2017, the best-selling album in the world that year. Its lead singles “Shape of You” and “Castle on the Hill” debuted in the top two spots of the charts, “Shape of You” spent twelve weeks at number one in the United States, and “Perfect” became a worldwide hit. The album won the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album.

Records and collaborations

The Divide world tour became the highest-grossing concert tour ever at the time, and Sheeran’s solo, loop-pedal live shows, just one man building songs in real time, became part of his appeal. He turned collaboration into its own project with 2019’s No.6 Collaborations Project, which paired him with a long list of artists and included “I Don’t Care” with Justin Bieber. He continued the symbol series with = (Equals) in 2021, full of songs about becoming a father and featuring “Bad Habits” and “Shivers,” and the more somber – (Subtract) in 2023, written after a period of personal hardship.

A steady evolution

Sheeran’s writing has stayed candid and prolific. He has said he wrote hundreds of songs while shaping recent albums, choosing creativity over chasing another obvious single, and in 2025 he released Play, a brighter, globally influenced record that drew on sounds from beyond his usual palette. Honored with an MBE in 2017, he remains one of the most reliable hitmakers in pop, a songwriter whose music turns up at weddings, on radio and in stadiums in roughly equal measure.

The loop pedal and the live show

Sheeran’s live act became part of his legend. Rather than tour with a band, he typically performs alone, using a loop pedal to record and layer guitar parts, beats and vocals in real time, building a full arrangement on stage with nothing but a guitar and his own hands. That stripped-down approach, carried into the largest stadiums in the world, made his concerts feel both intimate and impossibly large, and it set him apart in an era of elaborate, pre-programmed pop spectacles.

A songwriter for other artists too

Sheeran’s craft extends well beyond his own records. He has written and co-written songs for a long list of other artists and collaborated across genres, from pop and R&B to country and hip-hop. Twice honored with the Ivor Novello Award for Songwriter of the Year, he has built a reputation as one of the most dependable hitmakers of his generation, a writer who can shape a song for almost any voice while keeping his own catalogue full of chart-toppers.

One of the era’s best-sellers

Across little more than a decade, Sheeran turned that one-man approach into one of the biggest careers in modern music. His albums have topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic, his singles rank among the most-streamed songs ever recorded, and his tours have broken attendance and box-office records. For all the scale, his appeal has stayed rooted in something simple: plainspoken songs about love, home and ordinary life, delivered by a singer who still sounds like the teenager who moved to London with a guitar and a folder of his own songs, chasing a career one small gig at a time, a habit that never quite left him even at the top.

Most loved songs

A spread across his catalogue. Each title opens through the in-site player.

From quiet acoustic ballads to chart-dominating singles, Sheeran’s songs are everywhere. If one of them is stuck in your head, type it into the search box above to find it.