Ed Sheeran covered The Pogues‘ ‘Fairytale Of New York’ while performing at Dublin’s 3Arena earlier this week.
Sheeran closed the final show of his ‘Loop’ tour on Tuesday (December 9) with the festive cover, telling the crowd: “You will sing every single word as loud as you can Dublin. Thanks for having me and have a great Christmas.” He was also joined on stage by the artists Beoga, Biird – both of whom are Irish – and Nizlopi.
Check out the cover below:
Prior to the Dublin show, Sheeran had performed shows in Paris, Munich, Coventry and Manchester in support of his new album ‘Play’. It offered fans the chance to watch the artist in smaller venues than usual, with Sheeran previously playing multiple nights at Wembley Stadium as part of his massive ‘+−=÷× Tour’ (aka ‘Mathematics Tour’).
Last time he was in Ireland, Sheeran made a surprise appearance at a music and arts festival in Wexford town back in August, performing Irish folk songs and original tracks at The Sky And The Ground Pub.
He revealed earlier this year that though he was born in England, he culturally identifies as Irish and his dad is from Belfast.
“I class my culture as Irish. I think that’s what I grew up with,” he said (via BBC). “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. “I feel like just because I was born in Britain doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to just be [British]… 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.”
In other news, Paris-based production company La Blogothèque has accused Netflix of ripping off their many iconic one-take gigs in its new Ed Sheeran special, One Shot.
“We heard about One Shot, the new program Netflix launched with Ed Sheeran,” read the first frame of their Instagram carousel.
“Honestly, we are flattered by the tribute paid to the thousands of ‘one shots’ we produced during the last 20 years.”
La Blogothèque then instructed its followers to “see for yourself” by attaching numerous side-by-side images, comparing certain frames in One Shot to stills from previous films the firm had released.
These include a shot of Sheeran performing onstage, looking out to the venue (compared to Phoenix‘s 2017 show), a frame of the singer playing the guitar in the back of a taxi (compared to a Sylvan Esso performance in 2014), and a still of the star walking across a bridge (compared to Johnny Flynn in 2008).
