Ed Sheeran says award shows are ‘filled with resentment and hatred’

Ed Sheeran has slammed US awards shows, saying the room is often “filled with resentment and hatred towards everyone else”.

English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran didn’t mince his words about his disdain for US award shows in an interview following the 2021 MTV VMAs where he performed.

“The room is filled with resentment and hatred towards everyone else and it’s quite an uncomfortable atmosphere,” the 30-year-old said in an interview with radio host Julia on her Audacy segment The Julia Show.

The problem isn’t his fellow entertainers being toxic, he clarified, but the competitive energy wrought by their groupies and the context.

“All the artists are sweet people, but they’re, like, surrounded by entourages that want them to win, too, so it’s one artist surrounded by 10 people and another artist surrounded by 10 people and everyone is kind of giving each other the side-eye,” Sheeran said.

English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran with Maisie Peters at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

The VMAs are not uniquely miserable, he added, noting that the aggressive overtones shadow virtually all well-known American entertainment awards.

“It’s nothing to do with MTV or the award show – it’s at all the other awards shows,” too, he said, before naming the Grammys, AMAs and Billboards. “It’s just lots of people wanting other people to fail and I don’t like that.”

He explained that Brits are much less intense when it comes to handing out top honours, significantly because everyone gets sloshed at UK shows.

“In England, our award shows are just like everyone gets drunk and no one really cares who wins or loses, it’s just sort of a good night out,” said Sheeran, who has won over 117 awards – including four Grammys and one American Music Award – in the course of his career.

For the same reasons, afterparties aren’t much better.

Ed Sheeran is not a fan of US awards shows. Picture: Cindy Ord/Getty Images for SiriusXM

“The afterparties, again … it’s not just musicians. It’s musicians, all their entourages, then you got influencers and blah blah blah,” he said.

Talking with colleagues has proved to him he’s not alone in feeling upset by US awards show culture.

“People get the same feeling as me at those award shows,” he said. “I’ve spoken to people and they’re like, ‘I just felt really depressed afterwards.’ The atmosphere is just not nice … It’s a really, really horrible atmosphere to be in there. I always walk away feeling sad and I don’t like it.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission