Ed Sheeran inspires at his concert in Frankfurt

Neulich in any pedestrian zone. A guy with messy hair bangs the acoustic guitar and sings his heart out. He is probably playing his own songs and some of the passersby slow down their steps and listen a little more closely. “Not bad,” they might think as they open their purse to throw a little something into the troubadour’s guitar case before moving on, perhaps humming the melody they just heard in their heads, but it’s soon replaced by another sensory impression.

Friday evening in Frankfurt’s Waldstadion: A guy with tousled hair hits the acoustic guitar, sings his heart out and 61,000 spectators are delighted. Of course, they opened their wallets wide for a ticket beforehand, because the boy with the guitar up there on the stage has long since stopped playing for a few coins, but is a world star, even if he would certainly pass for a street musician on the outside.

The attitude of the “lad from the next door” has always been Ed Sheeran’s trademark and yet the completely unpretentious appearance of the British musician still amazes anew, even when you know that he really doesn’t need a show to inspire the masses . All he needs is his guitar, a keyboard and a loop machine, with which he records small melodic motifs, strummed chords and percussive sequences generated on the guitar’s sound box, as well as his voice in different registers, plays them by pedaling and thus accompanies himself.

Sheeran is an excellent master of this craft, but it is not a unique selling point in current pop events, just as there was actually no shortage of song-writing singers with acoustic guitars eleven or twelve years ago when he made his breakthrough. And yet everyone has a thing for a red-haired boy from the north of England, whose biggest hobby to this day is writing and playing songs, as he tells the Frankfurt audience at the first of three sold-out concerts in Deutsche Bank Park .

Because many of these songs have become hits that have sold millions of times, Sheeran can be sure of polyphonic, lyrically reliable choirs in his performances, which repeatedly ensures poignant moments during the two-hour concert, when a song like “The A Team” rings out from many thousands of throats , in which Sheeran even lets the audience sing the harmonies after brief instructions, or in “Perfect” not only encourages choral singing, but also cell phone lights.

Last but not least, Sheeran has been entertaining the masses with such rituals for a long time and a guitar and a loop station would probably be enough for him in the future to maybe even play on areas the size of the Sahara or the Great Plains, but he has decided on his current one , another tour titled with mathematical signs (“+-=÷x”, pronounce mathematics) came up with some new ideas. This time, the gifted soloist is accompanied by a six-piece band, which provides stadium rock pressure on individual songs such as the concert opening on “Tides” and “Blow”, keyboard sounds on “Visiting Hours” for atmosphere or the use of a violin on “Galway Girl”. provides an additional timbre. This participation is not absolutely necessary for Sheeran’s performance, but the additional instruments underscore the potential of many of his compositions, which are perhaps so popular with many of the thirty-one-year-old singer’s colleagues because they work in the most varied of arrangements and genres due to their simplicity, as Sheeran demonstrates himself on his biggest hit “Shape Of You”. In the studio version, with its dancehall and Tropicana references, it is actually the best urban pop, but the slimmed-down live version could also be cause for joyful dancing at a folkpunk concert or a campfire meeting.

In such an ambience you would not get the biggest spectacle of this Sheeran tour, which undoubtedly offers the stage. It’s circular and has a kind of hood that lifts as soon as Sheeran enters the stage. It then serves as a projection surface for a motley flicker of colors and lights or for video sequences, which are also projected onto six other screens in the form of guitar picks. The stage itself is black and features a rotating rim, reminiscent of a spinning vinyl single from a bird’s-eye view. Around the stage, which can be seen from all seats, which should actually be right in the middle of the stadium, but was set up slightly offset because of the large television cube above the contact point, six other small platforms have been set up, four of which are used by the band members when they are on duty as Venues serve and which they leave again for Sheeran’s solo parts. This detail is also important in the coherent overall picture. What stays in mind is the guy with the tousled hair, who casts a spell over hundreds of thousands with his guitar alone.