“Are you ready for the best night of your life?”
Support act Maisie Peters tries to hype the crowd, but most are too busy buying hot chips and slushies in Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium – a pilgrimage destination for every Queenslander who loves NRL. Tonight, the pilgrims are back: middle-age folks, young couples with beers in hand, families dressed in matching merch, and married lesbians. Queenslanders who love football also love Ed Sheeran.
I know why. This music is earnest, addictive, energetic, and the songs have cemented themselves as sentimental milestone markers for an entire generation. Looking around, I can already tell a lot of these people played Sheeran at their proposals, at their weddings, on the night they conceived their kids. Some of those same people have brought along the lucky conceptions (who are now eight to 12 years olds). The pressure on this event to deliver in romantic nostalgia is almost unbearable.
From the first support act – the transcendent 19-year-old Budjerah – it becomes obvious that the tension will be broken by sheer musical excellence. The Bundjalung singer’s voice soars effortlessly as the stadium fills, earning cheers for him and his band. Maisie Peters comes next – a British cross between early Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, oozing tween lust. She makes a real effort to endear herself to the local crowd, throwing in a medley of Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn and Missy Higgins’ Scar (I had childbirth flashbacks) and at one point screaming, “Australia I heard you’re really good at clapping!”, but none of the Queensland football pilgrims oblige.
The stadium is arranged in the round, featuring six leaning pillars with platforms surrounding a circular stage and screen. The cylindrical screen lifts to reveal Sheeran in the centre. He begins to play, and does not stop for two and a half hours – delivering 23 songs back-to-back. He opens with Tides and Blow, and brings a fierce, active, Led Zeppelin energy to the stage, his band scattered on the six platforms like orbiting moons. There are pyrotechnics, fireworks and flashing graphics on every screen. It’s an onslaught for the senses, but one thing stands out: Sheeran’s complete devotion and commitment to this particular performance, on this particular night. He is even wearing a custom-made shirt that reads “Brisbane”.
The band disappears, and Sheeran arranges his renowned loop pedal setup, beginning with I’m a Mess. The stage revolves, and he runs around it almost constantly, his pedals spread around it like a clock face, recording each layer of each song. It’s an athletic art – he looks like a football player skipping and dancing over the treadmill of the stage, footwork moving each song forward, and ensuring each of the 52,000 audience members can catch a glimpse of him.
He works hard – harder than far too many artists I have seen – and his voice holds as he moves and sweats. Every song has its own short film or thematic graphics projected – Castle on a Hill has an anime-inspired cartoon – and mixed with live footage of his face. The production is slick, and even in the ballads no one loses attention.
The love ballads feel like strange insertions in what is quite a sophisticated set list. Tens of thousands of people move as one as they hear familiar chords, and pull out their phone torches for starlit mood lighting. When he plays Perfect, someone proposes in the aisle near me, eliciting squeals from surrounding punters.
I’m cynical. People I know in the thick of divorce settlements danced to Sheeran at their weddings, too. It’s possible that Sheeran’s success has something to do with his Cyrano effect – he has written the words women wish their partners could say, but never will. He is tolerated by the men, he isn’t a heart-throb. He’s the pale, dad-bodied everyman. He’s not stealing your girl – in fact, his music might be a reason you still have her.
For the encore, Sheeran remerges in an “Always Was, Always Will Be” shirt, and finishes with You Need Me, I Don’t Need You. It is thrilling – the rap is verbose and technical, the song furious, and it feels like a reclamation of his craft and career. I am left converted: he is quite simply virtuosic.
It all ends with fireworks, and bodies crammed in cement tunnels trying to get out to public transport. Children stagger behind parents, exhausted. I watch couples bicker, lose one another, reunite. One bloke complains to his girlfriend that she spoke too much during the concert. At the bus station, a young man harasses a young woman, and a group of Queensland football pilgrims pursue them diligently, to intervene.
“Are you ready for the best night of your life?”
