Ed Sheeran’s Australian tour kicks off at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium with a masterclass in showmanship
The undisputed modern king of pop and consummate guitar hero began a nine-date Australian stadium tour in Brisbane on Friday night. | LIVE REVIEW
The last time Ed Sheeran was sighted performing on an Australian stage, he was smiling and banging a tambourine beside Paul Kelly and Kylie Minogue, as Jimmy Barnes and his band belted out an Easybeats classic.
A strange and unforgettable night, that. The occasion was a state memorial service for Michael Gudinski, the late Mushroom Group boss, but the vibe was far from funereal: instead, it was more akin to an upbeat rock concert or a lively footy match.
The flame-haired British singer-songwriter was immensely fond of the big, brash Australian businessman, and had made the trip to Rod Laver Arena to say farewell in March 2021, complete with a two-week stay in hotel quarantine.
At the memorial, Sheeran had also performed a surprise duet with Minogue, as well as a short solo acoustic set that included the debut of Visiting Hours, which he’d written while holed up in isolation and thinking about his friendship with the departed. In a touching moment, his voice faltered near the song’s end. He broke down and left the stage.
Much has changed. No more quarantines nor crowd restrictions, for starters, so about 57,000 people gathered on a Friday night in February at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium for the first of his nine concerts on these shores.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that Sheeran remains the undisputed modern king of pop.
This Australia and New Zealand tour has sold more than 900,000 tickets – an astonishing number, but second to Sheeran’s record-breaking 2018 run, which sold more than 1m tickets, one of Gudinski’s proudest career achievements as a promoter.
It’s telling that the Brit is now competing only with himself at this level of superstardom. Who else but he could walk onto a gigantic stage in a stadium and perform armed only with an acoustic guitar, his voice, and technology that allowed him to record and loop his parts on the fly?
That is what he did in 2018, standing stationary at one end of this same venue and delivering his passionately earnest acoustic pop songs.
It is still largely what he is doing this time around, albeit with the occasional assistance of a five-piece band backing him on drums, keys, bass and two electric guitars.
Halfway through the concert, he said of this decision, “I’ve played with a loop station since I was 14 years old. The last however many times I’ve played in Brisbane has been solo. I felt like on the Divide tour, nine million people saw the one-man show and I thought, ‘I can’t come back with the same show’.”
The chief difference on this tour – dubbed Mathematics, as a nod to the mega-selling albums he’s released with titles like Plus, Multiply, Divide and Equals – is that Sheeran is performing in the centre of the stadium, on a giant turntable that constantly spun.
At four edges of the circle were microphones, loop stations and water bottles, plus another stationary set-up in the middle, on a stage that smartly raised on his approach and retracted when he stepped away.
This central circle was ringed by six giant pylons and flanked by big screens shaped like guitar picks; fireworks and pyrotechnics were occasionally blasted skyward, particularly during the hard-rocking second number Blow.
Hung above Sheeran was a scaffold wrapped in a continuous LED screen broadcasting his visage and other animated visuals in high definition; six speaker arrays jutted from the central ring, as well as two from each pylon, affording loud and clear sound to all corners of the venue (in theory, at least).
Positioning Sheeran’s accompanists at the base of the pylons was a smart move, as the audience on the floor could turn and watch them if they wished; but it was otherwise easy to forget about the extra musicians and focus on the man in the centre, who held focus for a touch over two hours, most of it while performing solo, and often while pacing around the turntable.
Sheeran turned 32 on Friday. “This isn’t the first birthday I’ve had on stage,” he said. “But the happiest I am is when I’m on stage, and I love having my birthday here.”
It was a happy day, he said, but also a sad one: “This is the first show I’ve played in Australia since the late, great Michael Gudinski passed away. I miss you, man,” he said, before performing Visiting Hours.
Having witnessed several hundred concerts of all sizes since this man last performed in this venue, I can say with certainty that what Sheeran gave us on Friday night was nothing less than immaculate showmanship delivered by a singular artist whose love for live performance is unquestionable.
Between songs, he joked about touring for “eight or nine years solid”, after releasing his debut album in 2011. While on an enforced break from music, wherein he was charged with attempting to find a hobby, he found himself … writing songs.
“I love playing on stage,” he said, simply and truthfully. “I love writing all sorts of pop music. I’m not a snob: I write songs that other people are gonna sing.”
It was moving to watch him out there, spinning on that black circle, in the middle of a gigantic, multimillion-dollar concert event composed of many thousands of moving parts that required a cast of hundreds to get to show time.
There he was, just one man and his songs, carrying his self-belief and drive like a sword and shield, amid a stadium brimming with people who fully believed in what he had to offer.
The crowd response to his biggest hits – Perfect, Photograph, Shape of You and Bad Habits among them – was as full-throated as any song played in this venue recently, including standout concerts by Guns N’ Roses, Elton John and Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Not so long ago, Sheeran was just another guy with a guitar being ignored in the corner of a pub somewhere in England. Now he’s a central pillar of popular culture whose sweetly sung songs float through the air, as undeniable and uplifting as a sunrise.
His path to this station in life is inspiring, and he gives the impression of having stayed a decent and humble person despite his galactic success.
What’s more, he is a modern guitar hero: thousands of children were watching him nimbly bang out open chords and perform intricate finger-picking runs, and how many of those kids will be begging their parents to buy them a six-string like Ed’s tomorrow, if they haven’t already? What a gift of an artist he is, and what a magnificent show that was.
Ed Sheeran’s Australian tour continues in Brisbane (Saturday and Sunday), followed by Sydney (February 24 + 25), Melbourne (March 2 + 3), Adelaide (March 7) and Perth (March 12).