Ed Sheeran: Rise of the Brits boy

The 20-year-old from Framlingham in Suffolk was at the Savoy Hotel last night, playing his next single, Give Me Love, to the music industry's great and good while this year's shortlist was revealed. His style is a far cry from the usual razzle-dazzle of a Brits performance - he appears alone on stage with just an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal, which records and repeats segments of guitar and voice to build up layers of sound. But it's this unfussy method that has turned him into a huge live draw and helped his debut album, wordlessly titled + and released by Atlantic, to go double platinum since its release last autumn.

His success has surprised many, given how different his music is from the brash dance and hip hop that currently dominates the Top 40. His first single, The A Team, spent 13 weeks in the Top 10, edging aside all the party-time anthems despite being a wispy acoustic ballad about a drug-addicted prostitute.

Sheeran himself doesn't seem so shocked when I speak to him - his confident, articulate patter could win him a job as Alan Sugar's Apprentice in another life. All he'll concede is a raised eyebrow at the speed of his rise.

"I was at the Brits last year on the Atlantic table, as I'd just been signed," he tells me.

"Tinie Tempah did so well, then came up to me and said, 'Next year's your year'. I always thought it would take longer to build up that kind of momentum, but maybe not."

As usual with "overnight success" stories, the truth is that years of graft have brought him to the Brits as a favourite. He's been hailed as a modern internet phenomenon, selling independently released EPs online and benefiting from enthusiastic web chatter by his largely student fanbase. Yet Sheeran has really made his own success by the oldest route: gigging very hard indeed.

After arriving in London five years ago to make his mark as a singer-songwriter, by 2009 he was playing more than 300 shows a year. He says he also did "a fair few" last year, although more of his time was taken up making his album and promoting it across Europe and Australia. He still managed to play four London gigs in a single day last April after 1,000 fans turned up to see him in the 250-capacity Barfly venue. Then there was a full summer of festivals and long tours through May-June and October-December. "Last year wasn't really my gigging year," he claims, improbably.

He plays his biggest London shows yet next week at Brixton Academy, and insists he still doesn't need to give in and get himself a backing band. "We've upscaled the show with better lights and videos and a crisper sound, but if the loop pedal works at Brixton it'll work one day at the O2 too. I'll get a band when I write an album with a band. This one was made with just me and my guitar so that's the way I perform it."

If you haven't seen it before, it is a shock when the boy who looks like a roadie, all crazy ginger hair and big trainers, strolls on alone and starts dancing, beatboxing and whipping up a storm of sound with those pedals on faster songs such as Grade 8 and You Need Me, I Don't Need You. When he covers the folk standard Wayfaring Stranger he even puts the guitar down and uses just voice and rhythm to build a hypnotic patchwork.

He's not the first to use the trick - KT Tunstall got her big break playing her song Black Horse and the Cherry Tree solo like that on Jools Holland in 2004, and Damien Rice, an acknowledged influence, used it a lot in concert. Sheeran says he picked it up from a lesser known Irishman called Gary Dunne, whom he saw as a young gig-goer and ended up inviting to support him at Shepherd's Bush Empire last October.

It's Sheeran who's made it cool though. "I went to Denmark Street the other day to buy a new loop pedal and they said they'd sold out because of all the people coming in asking what I use. That's wicked," he says.

Keen to stay on top now he's there, he's obviously given some thought to the source of his appeal. "I'm 20, all my friends go to university, I wear baggy jeans and hoodies and I think they see me as one of their own rather than some glitzy, glamorous person who looks like a star. I was a fan who went to gigs and wanted to meet the band afterwards and if I did that was the best thing that happened all year. Now my fans see themselves in me."

But there's a wide streak of self-belief in him as well that isn't so commonplace. Not many musicians would release a single like You Need Me, I Don't Need You, a bold up-yours to the management team that dropped him early on. It boasts: "Don't need another wordsmith to make my tune sell" and "I didn't go to BRIT School". Under those ordinary looks there's no "Aw, shucks, famous? Little me?" attitude. He has big plans - next up is a long spring tour supporting Snow Patrol that will introduce him to American audiences - and he's prepared to work hard for what he wants. "I'm not looking for time off. I don't need much sleep."

He also has gifts as a networker. A year ago his No5 Collaborations Project EP reached the Top 50 when he released it himself as an unknown, a feat that earned him his major-label record deal. It featured Sheeran singing alongside notable UK rappers including Wretch 32, Wiley, Sway and Devlin. The red-haired kid from Suffolk knows his urban sounds. "I've been a fan of UK hip hop from a young age, so I was able to write songs that suited or challenged them because I knew their music so well."

And he doesn't leave anyone behind as he rises. Unlikely as it may sound, Sheeran's biggest influence is acoustic duo Nizlopi, known in the wider world for their cutesy lone hit JCB Song, the surprise Christmas No 1 in 2005. Sheeran used to follow them around on tour and eventually became their guitar technician. Now Nizlopi's newly solo Luke Concannon has supported him.

This year he's making more friends. He says he's about to release a new four-track EP of collaborations with an American rapper whom he won't name just yet. "It's someone people are aware of, who's part of a big, big movement."
Then he promises new singles or downloads in collaboration with Wretch 32, Devlin, dance star Example and new dubstep band True Tiger. He won't be standing still for a moment, though he may need to stay in one place for a few minutes in February to make an acceptance speech at the Brits.

"I've now sold just under a million albums. I've stamped myself as this commercial artist so my task now is to keep people interested, keep people talking about me rather than just thinking of me as a pop singer-songwriter. A year ago I was underground and kind of edgy. Now people think they know who I am so I'm going to keep confusing them. The next few singles are bluegrass and grime and drum 'n' bass. It's gonna be odd."

Ed Sheeran plays the O2 Academy Brixton, SW9 (0844 477 2000, o2academybrixton.co.uk) Jan 20/21. The Brit Awards are on Feb 21 at the O2 Arena, SE10 (08444 999 990, brits.co.uk), and will be shown live on ITV 1.