Ed Sheeran says he classes his culture as Irish
Singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran has said he identifies culturally as Irish despite being born and raised in England.Brought up in Suffolk, the Galway Girl singer's dad hails from Belfast."I class my culture as Irish. I think that's what I grew up with," he told The Louis Theroux Podcast."My dad's family is... he's got seven brothers and sisters. We'd spend all of our holidays in Ireland. My first musical experiences were in Ireland, I grew up with trad music in the house. So I identify culturally as Irish, but I was obviously born and raised in Britain."
"I don't overthink it but I do feel like my culture is something that I'm really proud of and grew up with and want to express," he added."And I feel like just because I was born in Britain doesn't necessarily mean that I have to just be (British), there's loads of people I know that are half this or quarter this."He added: "I don't think there's any rules to it. It should be how you feel and how you were raised and what you lean into."Asked if he gets "a lot of love" in Ireland, he said: "I'd say it's basically my second home, musically. I'd say Ireland is the place that I am most successful musically."
Budget airline
Sheeran is married to Cherry Seaborn and the couple have two children. He also spoke to Theroux about the difficulties of fame and having to have security for his family.He said that for him personally, "it's kind of the part of the normal of being in the public eye" but that is was different when it came to his wife and children."I'm very, very private about my children's image... I can't take them to zoos or parks or anything really without someone trying to film them."There are times where the normal parts of life I kind of mourn for and wish I could push my kind on a swing in a public park and it not be weird, you know?"He said: "People go, well that's the trade-off. But my kids have not signed up to that."He added it was sometimes tricky when he was flying as he usually travels on commercial flights due to environmental concerns."We're flying back on Ryanair from a gig in Italy last year but all of my fans who'd been at the gig were flying back!"I like the environment, I like trees. I'd find it hard to justify. No one's perfect. When we're doing intense promo trips, there will be the odd time [taking a private jet]", he told Theroux.
Speaking about his music, Sheeran said: "The two joys of my life professionally are writing songs and performing. I hate releasing music. I find the whole process quite stressful."You love the songs so much and then suddenly you're putting them out there, and that might change your relationship with them if other people don't like them. And I'm trying my hardest not to let that happen."He also mused on his relationship with success."I kind of feel I had my peak with [the album] Divide and I'm kind of coasting now. I don't know if I'll ever get back up there again but [when I had] that level of fame, that was my unhappiest [time]."I'm much happier with the balance I've got now."After releasing two acoustic albums in 2023, Sheeran's upcoming pop album, Play, his eighth studio album, will be released in September.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
VR rave takes clubbers back to 1989's 'second summer of love'
Britain, 1989. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, and the past decade was characterised by great economic growth - and great social hardships, including strikes, racial tension and football many younger people, Britain felt like a nation divided. But suddenly, a new, hedonistic youth culture swept the nation. The acid house rave now, an experience at the Barbican can take you back to those hedonistic times. Based around electronic club music born out of Chicago and fuelled by a new type of illegal synthetic drug - ecstasy - dancing at secret raves in fields and warehouses up and down the country became the way many young people broke through social and racial divides and stick two fingers up to the Pursuit of Repetitive Beats is the brainchild of creator and director Darren Emerson, (no not that Darren Emerson, though being a Techno DJ and member of the band Underworld would be very convenient to this story) who wants to give would-be ravers as close to an authentic experience of that time as part of it, the VR ravers don their virtual reality goggles, vibrating vest, headphones and finger controllers to get virtually into an old red Peugeot and drive down the motorway and find the rave. The choice of car is a deliberate bit of nostalgia for Mr Emerson."The red 205 was because my mate had a red 205, but it wasn't a GTi, which I like to remind him. "This experience has travelled all around the world but now we're here in London, and it really tells a universal story. "It's about going out with your friends, getting lost, taking a chance and finding your community - and when the sun comes up the next morning you feel completely changed." Transported back to 1989 at the experience is DJ Erique Dial, one of the producers of Raze Break 4 Love, a seminal house music track of the late 1980s. Mr Dial arrived in Britain from the US just as the house scene was starting to hit. He never left. He started sampling sounds from blue movies in London's Soho - they were eventually used on the track by Vaughan Mason."I heard the track being played again and again on a pirate radio station," Mr Dial said, "and I was like, that's where those samples ended up". Mr Dial's first rave experience was in 1987 at Clink St in east London."It was this derelict sort of place. The glow-in-the-dark stuff, sweat dripping down from the ceiling."You'd see these people who you would never talk to on the street. You would never be seen with these people, and there you are, you're hugging, you're dancing. A lot of people made friends for life."No one's fighting any more, they're just out raving."He still plays the music from those times at raves across London, where the clientele varies from people in their 50s or older, who experienced the scene first time round, and younger people discovering the music through their parents or through video games like Grand Theft Auto. Mr Dial was joined on the virtual dancefloor by Richard Raindance, who organised London's first licenced rave in Raindance comes from what he describes as an "English crime family" and says without the London rave scene he would probably have followed them."Raves were a complete mixture of young and old, everyone was there for the same reason, to just forget your problems," he said. In 1989 the Raindance team hired coaches to transport thousands of revellers from the West End to continue partying in a field in Jenkins Lane, Barking, after the nightclubs closed at 02: Raindance said these all-night outdoor raves "definitely hastened the all-night licences in clubland".He still puts on Raindance raves today, although nowadays many of them take place in the daytime."It's never stopped. "It's changed but it never went away. It's still a beautiful experience." Leaving the Barbican event, was actor Ryan from Liverpool and now living in London, he used to attend raves as a young teen and said the VR experience was "like walking through a past life". "I was back to being a teenager again, tagging along as a fourteen-year old with older brothers, older sisters, waiting on the M62 at one of the service stations for that phone call."We used to live for the weekend. Everyone used to live for the weekend. It's all you would talk about all week at school, who was going where. You made friends for life."He's not the only one getting emotional. There is a chance for visitors to In Pursuit Of Repetitive Beats to leave a recorded message on the phone box at the entrance to the Emerson is saving them all, and he let me hear some of those left at the London experience." It completely took me back to 1989," said one message. "I feel quite emotional, I'm going to be sixty next week.""I feel blessed that I could re-live those emotions," said another, and "best times ever" said a third. "Still listening to acid house, still raving."
BBC News
an hour ago
- BBC News
Essex artist Elsa James opens British slavery exhibition
A renowned Essex-based artist is looking to reflect on three centuries of Britain's involvement in the transatlantic slave trade through her new James recently launched It Should Not Be Forgotten at Firstsite museum in Colchester, with the intention of "exposing the atrocities of this history".The collection of work features colonial archive records alongside photography, soundscapes and a mixture of media."The work is melding all of those fragmented bits of history together using new media," James told the BBC. "It's a response to what this history has done to people in the African diaspora - that rupture and erasure." Within the exhibition, James presents a series of text screen prints that give a voice to two enslaved women that were featured in the journals of the British plantation enslaver Thomas said: "I tried to give the women a voice that wasn't abused, but a voice of their own."As humans, I've given them back their humanity and womanhood."Visitors can also explore a large-scale photographic installation that draws inspiration from American academic Christina Sharpe, larger-than-life-sized images created in collaboration with choreographer Seke Chimutengwende, and a collection of drawings, photomontages and said: "It urges audiences to reflect on three centuries of Britain's involvement in the trafficking of African people - recognising it as a crime against humanity that has led to racist ideologies that still impact Black people today." Follow Essex news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
The Sun
2 hours ago
- The Sun
Britpop legend reveals band's unreleased new song is a ‘banger' ahead of first album in 12 years
OCEAN Colour Scene are working on new music which could become the band's first album in 12 years, The Sun can exclusively reveal. The popular British band has five top 10 albums to its name but hasn't put out a full length release since 2013's Painting. 4 4 That might soon change as frontman Simon Fowler has written three new tracks, one of which guitarist Steve Cradock has branded a "banger". In an exclusive interview with The Sun ahead of their performance at Godiva Festival, Cradock, 55, said: "Simon sent me three tunes, that's what I've heard. I've demoed them up to a point where they sound f**king smart. There's one banger, and there's one interesting one. "I mean, we haven't done a record in like 11 years or something, we've been waiting for Simon to write for a long, long time. " The Beatles wrote together for eight years. That sort of puts it into some kind of funk. From where I sit at the moment, it would be fun for us all to do it, I think." The group's back catalogue includes singles The Day We Caught The Train and The Riverboat Song, both of which are currently getting play time during festival season. Having released 10 albums to date, Cradock is content playing Ocean Colour Scene's hits, of which there are many - 17 top 40 singles to be precise. "I don't think it would make a difference to gigs, if I'm honest," he says of a new record. "Because we've kind of got what we are through all the albums that we did back in the day. And when we play festivals, we play the main singles that people know, obviously. "I don't see the point in being self-absorbed when you're doing festivals. You've just got to play the songs that people hopefully will know. And leave it at that. "It's different for your own gigs. There's many tunes that we can unearth. I think that those sort of fans would find it interesting." While he wouldn't be drawn on a timescale for a new album, Cradock says the creative process could be very quick if material is right. Paul Weller - Wildwood "If the songs are there, it wouldn't take me long at all to produce it and to get it out." Away from Ocean Colour Scene, Cradock plays guitar for Paul Weller, a role he's held since 1992. Last year's 66 featured in numerous best of 2024 lists and will be followed this July by the Modfather's covers album, Finding El Dorado, featuring the likes of Robert Plant and Noel Gallagher. "It's beautiful, because you can see what a creative force Paul Weller is," he says. "That's just what he does, and he's a force of nature, and he's a force of melody. When you're in the studio, you see things happen just like that, in the instant, the second. And then, by the end of the day, something's happened. "There's not many days that I've seen where people got that disappointed. To be around that creative process is great." 4 4 Weller didn't hang around, laying it down in just 10 days, and there were no egos in the studio despite the calibre of musicians involved. Led Zeppelin frontman Plant turned up ready and willing to work like a regular session musician. "He was prepared for it, like a working musician, not a rock god," says Cradock. "He was humbling and he played some beautiful harp. Then we asked if he would sing and he sang and it was just like, 'wow'." Mod fan Cradock rejoiced in hearing Plant's tales from his days before superstardom, particularly how he played a role in a notorious battle between two subcultures on the south coast. "He told me he left the Black Country in '64 on his hand-painted Lambretta, went down to Hastings and got involved in the mods and rockers fight and then drove back on his Lambretta. "It blew my mind the fact that you've got this sort of rock icon who was originally a mod fighting the rockers. "He was a gentleman and he's a great singer and he's really tuned in to what's happening in that moment you know, a true professional, a G. He's a f***ing G." Music fans can hear Plant do his thing when the record is released on July 25.
