Getting Away With It

 Why is Ed Sheeran so big?

I hate to come off like one of those people who pay attention to lyrics like they're the most important thing in a song, or that Rihanna's Work is insipid due to it's repeated use of the title. It's not. It is a song for dancing to. The lyrics fulfil the purpose. A frequent victim of men-who-like-lyrics is Beyoncé's Run The World, which again, fulfils it's purpose. By the end of the song, you know who runs the world. 

Now let's look at Ed. Why are Ed Sheeran's lyrics so crap? 

Why do they say she's in the Class A team? Because she does class A drugs. Duh. But what does that mean? Does she frequently pity the fool that tries to stop her using drugs? Is she a master of disguise? Is she a hardened veteran? What has the A Team element, a crack squad of vigilantes, got to do with it at all? She might as well be a Class A Road, on a one way trip to an early death, or a Class AC, because aircon is cold and meth is also called ice. Apparently. 

Perhaps wisely, Ed never elaborates on the title line. Maybe it's just something stupid his peer group said and therefore he's only reporting it. It's not his fault a bunch of teenagers are idiots with crap wordplay. 

So, then, who is to blame for Lego House? He says he'll pick up the pieces and build a Lego house and then they can knock it down again. Leaving aside that he is singing about a fragile relationship prone to implosion and that the use of sturdy, robust and colourful Lego is not the best metaphor, he again is not arsed about elaborating on it. He has his title line, and that's enough. Job done. The rest of the song has lyrics interchangeable with any of his others about broken relationships. Not even a mention at the end that his Lego house is now standing strong without her. Not even that! It's half a thought. Not even a last verse from her point of view. Perhaps he's unable to imagine such a thing. 

This might seem unfair, picking on two of his older songs, so, fine, how about his latest? Visiting Hours. Again, we have our title line, and little else. I get it -- someone has died and he'd like to speak to them again. That's it. There's nothing further. You could compare that to Tears In Heaven, which is not only the same concept but already took it further; would the deceased even remember me? What use is an afterlife if the people you live don't even know you when you get there? Visiting Hours, on the other hand, is a mere postcard, a Facebook comment, from the living to the dead. That's it. Not even "visiting hours wouldn't be enough". Not even "I hope my loved ones can visit me when I am dead, too", not even a rumination on what happens if the living keep aging and growing but the deceased stays the same. Nothing. Just "lots has changed, mate." 

This would all be forgivable if the melody was any cop, but it's not. The opening lines are soulfully warbled, as if still searching for the hook, and the chorus rises and falls almost exactly like Candle in the Wind's mid-chorus, followed by some attempts at interest with a chromatic melody line, before having a go at a Ryan Adam's style linger at the end. It's ultimately a half finished Sam Smith song, a lesser Tom Odell work, even weaker than a subpar toss-off by James Bay. 

All three of them must be utterly baffled by his continued dominance and nearly billion quid in the bank. I don't fault anyone for liking this stuff but if Lewis Capaldi isn't a billionaire in a decades time then I'll have to believe the whole thing is rigged. 

It's extraordinary the level of laziness he gets away with, when even the first Taylor Swift album has both melodic pop songs and lyrics that offer something to the listener. She was about 17 then. Her first album written entirely by herself, Speak Now, has the staggering Dear John, a song Ed could never write on a billion years. Even a simple song like Mine is more sophisticated than anything he's ever written, purely because the last chorus is sung from the boyfriends point of view, confirming her feelings that she has expressed through the rest of the song. Ed would just repeat the same chorus, if he has one. Visiting Hours proves that sometimes he doesn't even have that.

The only time I can forgive his lyrics are in his dance songs. Sing, and now Bad Habits, both offer more than his ballads. Maybe he should try writing a Beyoncé song.