This is good rain, says Ed Sheeran on Saturday evening in the sold-out Olympic Stadium. It is his first of three stadium concerts that the British superstar is now playing in the Bavarian capital one week after his shows in Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium. Sheeran reached more than 200,000 spectators in Munich alone, before attracting the crowds again in Frankfurt. Sheeran has been filling stadiums across Europe for six months with his “+-=÷x” tour, which he had previously tested at a number of indoor concerts in Great Britain in March and April.
Now, many years earlier, Sheeran had repeatedly proven that as a singer he knew how to run a stadium all by himself. With his loop machine, he records smaller guitar figures, percussive insertions and keyboard sequences on stage, in order to then let them sound layered on top of each other exactly to the beat. That alone requires a good sense of rhythm and merciless precision. Nonetheless, in Sheeran’s concerts, it’s as if he were only casually tapping one or the other pedal with his prancing foot during his performances. Sheeran’s attention seems to be focused solely on his singing-along audience, which he is transforming into a 75,000-strong choir again this year in Munich’s Olympic Stadium. That alone is as poignant as it has been at Sheeran’s concerts for years.
The circular stage is the real sensation of this year’s European tour
This time, however, Sheeran has a band accompany him on a few songs; with the appropriate pressure forward through the drums, the bass and the cheering e-guitar sounds, or with the atmospheric deepening of the music through the additional key play of a keyboard player. Whereby the additional musicians are not on stage with Sheeran. Spread around the stage, they play on four smaller platforms. Only one violinist dances for a song on Sheeran’s circular stage, the latter is incidentally the real sensation of this year’s European tour. Because this round and rotating stage stands like a landed UFO in the middle of the stadium. The distance to the seats in the stadium furthest away from the edge of the stage is now correspondingly shorter, which enables every spectator in the concert to follow what is happening on stage not only via the many LED walls, some of which are shaped like huge guitar picks.
Although everyone could now see the singer without such stadium concert-proven visuals, the light art alone surpasses much of what experienced concert-goers have already been able to experience. The singer’s projections, which sometimes appear to be floating around and above the stage, sometimes mix with the sparkling sea of lights from the flashlights or mobile phones waved by the fans to create a breathtakingly beautiful starry sky in the middle of the stadium. That’s why the actual full moon on the other side of the stadium looks curiously at the magical ambience.
Ed Sheeran doesn’t let the rain destroy the show either – because in Munich he is “good”
Neither the fans nor Ed Sheeran let the sudden onset of rain destroy the mood in such an ambience. In spring in Belfast it would have rained during his concert, says Sheeran on Saturday evening. At that time it would have been windy and cold. In Munich, on the other hand, it is just good rain. Because the rain floods Sheeran’s open stage, the singer, who is also standing in the rain, asks: “If I slip here, please be merciful with me on social media.”
But the audience does not only remain well-disposed towards his star on social media. When Sheeran’s show, which was just as carefully as impressively amplified with pyrotechnics, is interrupted in the grand finale of the very last song due to a loss of sound, the audience applauds enthusiastically. After all, Sheeran had entertained her for over two hours. You would have forgiven him if the concert had ended with a loss of sound. But Sheeran waits patiently on stage for the bug to be fixed. Then he starts the song over again: “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You”. Everyone present has known for a long time: In truth, we all need each other.