“I already know that this is gonna be a top three best gig of my life,” Ed Sheeran pronounced early on Wednesday night (May 23). He had only just taken the stage at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y., to fete the 10th anniversary of his 2014 album x (Multiply) with a one-night-only performance, but there was a palpable thrum in the air that seemed to promise the pop star would make good on his vow by night’s end.
It’s hardly hyperbolic to say that expectations were sky high when Sheeran released his sophomore album in the summer of 2014. After years of relentlessly playing gigs around London, his 2011 debut, + (Plus), had turned the then-20-year-old from a small-town dreamer raised in the rural east of England into a reluctant superstar known the world over for his natural songwriting prowess, heartrending lyricism and shock of bright red hair.
The result was x, an inventive tour de force that pushed Sheeran’s talents in unexpected new directions and the second step in his master plan of releasing five mathematically themed albums named after operations commonly used in elementary arithmetic.
Pronounced “Multiply,” x outperformed its predecessor in spades, becoming Sheeran’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, landing four top five hits at pop radio and going on to be certified 5x platinum by the Recording Industry of Association of America. (By the close of 2019, the album also landed at No. 8 on the decade-end Billboard 200 encompassing the entire 2010s.)
Ten years later, in front of an arena filled with fans, Sheeran was ready to take a trip down memory lane and share stories about smash hits such as “Thinking Out Loud,” “Don’t” and “Photograph,” as well as cherished favorites including “Tenerife Sea” and “Bloodstream.”
“When I made this record, you know, you write the songs that are so personal, you hold them in … and it belongs to all you guys when it’s released,” he told the rapt audience. “But what I found listening back to this record, I sort of felt it was like reliving all of the experiences and kind of claiming the stories back.”
In between behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the creation of the album, Sheeran treated each song on the evening’s two-and-a-half hour setlist with the care and attention it deserved — with even deep cuts such as “Nina” and “Afire Love” receiving special new arrangements he’d weaved together on his trusty loop pedal just for the occasion.
Billboard was on the scene to capture all the memories, surprises and revelations at Sheeran’s one-night-only event. Dive into the multiplicity of unforgettable moments from the special x 10th anniversary show below.
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‘Sing’ to Set the Tone
After kicking things off with tender album opener “One,” Sheeran explained to the ecstatic crowd that he’d be playing the entirety of x from top to bottom, bonus tracks and (Wembley Edition) super-deluxe cuts included. (“If you’ve come here tonight to hear ‘Perfect’ … I’m very sorry,” he joked.)
As such, the first big hit of the show was “Sing,” the album’s lead single, which earned Sheeran his first top 15 single on the Hot 100, as well as the first No. 1 of his career in his native U.K. Introducing the raucous sing-along, the troubadour explained how crafting the song with producer Pharrell Williams inspired him to break away from the sound of his 2011 debut, +, and get brave enough to explore other genres.
“It was sort of like this portal had opened in my mind and it went, ‘You are not [just] a singer-songwriter, you don’t have to just always make slow, acoustic songs,” he said. “I think that my career went off on a different tangent at that point, when I suddenly realized that, ‘Oh, f–k, I can actually just work in genres and it’s always gonna be me because it’s me writing it and me singing it.’ And I do think that my career is in a place now because of this song. I think this song took me out of a pigeonhole.”
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‘Don’t’ (Bleep) With My Song
Next, Sheeran got the crowd even more electrified with “Don’t,” the album’s first top 10 hit on the Hot 100, which leap-frogged past “Sing” to peak at No. 9.
“Obviously, originally the lyrics said ‘Don’t f–k with my love,’” the singer conceded somewhat sheepishly after performing the diss track aimed at a certain famous but unnamed ex. He then went on to reveal that a chance encounter with an Uber driver sitting in Los Angeles traffic made the song more radio-friendly.
“I said I made music, he was like, ‘Play me some music!’” Sheeran recalled. “So I was playing him the album and he got to that song and he was like, “[sighs] Gotta be honest, man. I got kids. I wouldn’t play them that song.’”
The audience burst into laughter as Sheeran continued: “I said, ‘If I take the F-word out of it, would you play it to them?’ And he said, ‘Yeah. I would.’ So that’s why that song has the ‘Don’t [breathes] with my …’” before trailing off with a big grin on his face.
(Of course, Sheeran reinstated the F-word back into the track’s chorus for the explicit Rick Ross remix that was released in the wake of the original version’s success on the charts.)
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A Snapshot of Time Forever Frozen Still
Sheeran may have recently admitted to Billboard that there was a point in his career when he didn’t love x’s final single, “Photograph,” but he gave the emotional ballad a completely new treatment for its 10th anniversary. Inviting members of the New Hope Choir onto the stage, the singer performed the LP’s third top 10 hit on the Hot 100 backed by the gospel group to stunning, near-spiritual effect.
Despite his at times complicated feelings about the song, the four-time Grammy winner also told the crowd that “Photograph” — which he co-wrote with Snow Patrol pianist Johnny McDaid — ultimately became the cornerstone that the entirety of x was built around.
“It was at this moment that I was like, ‘That’s the first important song I’ve written for my second album,” he remembered feeling at the time. “And in that respect, we just didn’t know how to produce it up, ‘cause the album would go this way: I would work with Pharrell, and then I would work with Benny Blanco and then I’d work with Rick Rubin. We’d do so many different versions … and then eventually we sort of made the version that is on the record. It’s just this song that sort of keeps on giving the more and more that life goes on.”
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‘Maybe We Found Love Right Where We Were’
Following a hushed rendition of “Tenerife Sea” that turned Barclays Center into a sea of swaying lights and a couple of “quite personal” deep cuts that found him having to re-learn the lyrics in preparation for the show, Sheeran arrived at the biggest, most enduring hit from the x era. That’s right, it was finally time for “Thinking Out Loud.”
Three months after being released to radio, the love song became Sheeran’s highest charting single to date by peaking at No. 2 on the Hot 100, only to be surpassed by No. 1 hit “Shape of You” two years later. “Thinking Out Loud” also turned the unassuming musician into a Grammy winner for the first time when he took home the awards for song of the year and best pop solo performance at the 2015 ceremony.
Rather than attempt to reinvent the gold standard of 21st century wedding songs for the night, Sheeran played the ballad straight and simple, relying on just an electric guitar and his spellbinding vocals as the track’s swooningly choreographed music video played on the multitude of screens behind him.
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Injecting a Deep Cut With a Dose of Wonder (and Withers!)
When it came time to move beyond the album’s standard 12 tracks, Sheeran was quick to confess he was moving into something of a “big question mark” for the remainder of the set. “I know that ‘Thinking Out Loud’ is gonna go down well and I know that ‘Bloodstream’ is gonna go down well,” he told the assembled showgoers. “But when it comes to these bonus songs, some of these songs I’ve never, ever, ever played live before.”
That didn’t stop the singer-songwriter from confidently diving into uncharted waters, though, starting with the rapid-fire lyricism of “Take It Back.” (“This one took a hell of a long time to re-learn,” he quipped before launching into the tongue-twister.)
Stylistically, the x deluxe track certainly contains shades of Sheeran’s 2011 breakout hit “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You,” from the autobiographical verses he raps at a mile a minute to the simple, melodic refrain of the chorus. But to add an additional flex to the proceedings, the pop star transformed “Take It Back” into an extraordinary new creation by weaving elements of both Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” and “Ain’t No Sunshine” by the late, great Bill Withers into the hook. The result was a dazzling display of Sheeran’s expertly honed musicianship — one that elevated a lesser-known cut from his back catalog into a creative high water mark for the evening and gave jaw-dropping payoff to the meaning of “one night only.”
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Dusting Off His ‘Shirtsleeves’ & Returning to ‘New York’
After the crackerjack ingenuity of “Take It Back” earned him a standing ovation from the packed arena, Sheeran caught his breath by explaining the significance of “Shirtsleeves,” informing fans that it was the “very, very first song that was actually finished for x.”
“The reason that it’s a bonus track is … I mean, this is the way that the music works: The songs that you write straight after the record comes out and you go, ‘This is on the album’? It’s never on the album; it always ends up as the bonus track,” he said. “I see it as the glue that sort of is the bridge through each album. So you sort of finish writing an album … but you’re not really sure what you’re writing for, the sound it should be, the subject matter.”
Despite “Shirtsleeves” being the song that got the ball rolling on x, Sheeran admitted that he’d never actually played it live before, much to the delight of one distinct fan who’d made a sign requesting he do exactly that.
Later, the Ed Sheeran: The Sum of It All star also resurrected quiet B-side “New York” — which he revealed he’d only ever played once in 2014, at Madison Square Garden, before the song had even been released — but only after cheerfully declaring Brooklyn to be his favorite borough in New York City after living there throughout 2023.
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The Fourth, the Fifth, the Minor Fall & the Major Lift
Just like the (Wembley Edition) of his sophomore set, Sheeran ended the evening’s setlist with a solo rendition of “Lay It All on Me,” his 2015 collab with British drum and bass act Rudimental. However, the singer still had a couple of surprises up his plaid sleeves, and emerged a few minutes later for an encore of “Parting Glass,” the traditional Irish folk song he covered live at Wembley Stadium on the x Tour back in July 2015.
Then, he asked the New Hope Choir to join him on stage one last time for a stirring, reverential take on Leonard Cohen’s classic 1984 psalm “Hallelujah.” Showing just how much thought he’d put into each element of the concert, Sheeran explained that there was a specific reason he’d chosen to perform the modern-day hymn, and tied its title to the final lyrics of x’s traditional final track, “Afire Love.” (Written to memorialize his late grandfather’s battle with Alzheimer’s disease, the latter closes with Sheeran singing, “And all of my family rise from their seats to sing, ‘Hallelujah.’”)
The heartfelt selection perfectly capped a night of nostalgia, new memories and a particular magic between a superstar and his fans that has only seemed to multiply after 10 years of x.
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