Ed Sheeran live in Hong Kong: fans get a night to remember as star proves worth the wait
- After a broken arm caused the cancellation of his Hong Kong gig in 2017, the British musician more than made up for it at the city’s Disneyland last night
- In a masterful performance, the singer went through his full repertoire of hits during the two-hour concert
With a capacity of 20,000, the first sold-out night was one of the biggest concerts the city had seen since Taiwanese band Mayday christened the venue over six shows last year. A tower of screens, plus cameras that were trained on the somewhat scruffy star’s face for the entire two-hour concert, meant that even those sat 600 metres back could get a shot of Sheeran with their smartphones.
Clear skies and balmy temperatures made for high spirits as Japanese rockers One OK Rock opened the night with finesse and prepared the sea of screaming fans for the tattooed troubadour’s return.
Emerging onstage and seeming genuinely thrilled by the vast scale of the outdoor venue, the British musician raced through lively openers Castle on the Hill, Eraser and The A Team. With just an acoustic guitar, microphone and looper pedal, the 28-year-old was the sole performer onstage, weaving together layers of percussive elements, melodies and vocal harmonies to create his songs from the ground up.
Despite nearing the end of two-and-a-half years entertaining more than eight million fans on the tour for his latest album, Divide – the bestselling album worldwide in 2017 – Sheeran showed little fatigue as he ploughed through his extensive collection of relatable and catchy folk-pop tunes about heartbreak, drunken antics and personal growth told in first person or through the eyes of colourful characters.
To offset Sheeran’s bare-bones musical set-up, impressive visual animations loomed above, conjuring a sea of swirling crimson during the darkly atmospheric Bloodstream, a dizzying roulette wheel for party anthem Sing, and a shower of emojis to accompany lyrics about social media stalking during a mash-up of the songs Don’t/New Man.
Endearing yet predictable patter punctuated songs – from levelling with reluctant dads and boyfriends in the crowd in mock-apology (“Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be singing these songs because they’ve been blasted on the radio so much”) to charting his spectacular rise over the past decade with anecdotes of playing to empty rooms, and a self-deprecating nod to his much-maligned appearance on Game of Thrones.
A string of mellower tunes caused the set to sag slightly halfway through the show, as Sheeran clustered his tear-jerkers together. Billed as “some songs I never play at gigs”, the keening vocals and gentle folk guitar of All of the Stars, Hearts Don’t Break Around Here and Give Me Love were daisy-chained together in a medley to the delight of more hard-core fans – or “Sheerios”, as they are known.
Declaring he was having “a tremendous amount of fun”, Sheeran elevated the energy for Galway Girl, segueing into his The Hobbit soundtrack I See Fire before taking up his electric guitar on Thinking Out Loud.
“If you don’t know the words to this, you’re at the wrong concert,” Sheeran said, before launching into the soundtrack of a million first dances. Stars peeped through the rust-coloured sky above the visuals of animated line drawings.
Sheeran returned for an encore wearing a Hong Kong rugby shirt to the familiar synth pop of Shape of You before You Need Me, I Don’t Need You, a dynamic sign-off from a masterful showman.
With the city often being skipped by arena-filling megastars due to a lack of venue space, Sheeran’s slick show at Disney left hopes high for more appearances by artists of a similarly stratospheric calibre to come.
As for the singer himself – it’s safe to say he earned his way back into Hong Kong’s favours again.
