Flame-haired troubadour Ed Sheeran has announced his intention to move to Nashville and focus on country music.
He explained, “Nashville is my favourite city in the States, and it’s always been my end goal to move to Nashville and transition to country.”
Depending on your point of view, this may be a good thing or a hell without equal.
The question is, should Donald Trump refuse Ed Sheeran entry on the basis of crimes against music.
Let’s look at the facts.
Ed Sheeran is one of the indisputable heavyweights of the game. An easy listening, multiplatinum sensation guaranteed to whip up a storm at weddings, tea parties, and paint-drying parties.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Sheeran as a person. It’s just he’s become so massive, so undeniable, so inescapable, that a soul would pretty much have to go completely off grid to completely nullify the chance of being ambushed by one of his irksome melodies.
Indeed, there appears to be nowhere left in Western civilization where one can seek sanctuary from Sheeran’s bright, shiny face sublimely commanding you in a very self-deprecating way to succumb and accept the indisputable genius of the pop godhead.
It’s sheer warfare. If you refuse to buy into the line that nice-guy Sheeran is something more than an average singer/songwriter, you instantly become a hater of god’s chosen self-deprecator.
It’s not about hate, folks. Ed is no doubt a lovely person, as the media tells us at every opportunity. It’s just his domination of the charts and the media’s worship of his every utterance and move could almost have been masterminded by the diabolical intrigue of some Machiavellian figure dedicated to the death of pop music as we once knew it.
You know, when pop was edgy, had a dark undercurrent, a big f**k-you attitude and put the swagger in your walk and the rock n’ roll in your soul.
If Sheeran offends, misbehaves, or puts a foot out of place, his record sales plummet. And record sales and making money are the bottom line for Ed, who once said, “It’s the time of being polite.”
Which roughly translated could mean, “It’s the time to tow the line, do as you’re told, and keep the record company happy. If you want to have your cake and gorge on it.”
Sheeran’s music is like a particularly toxic sedative for the masses. He makes tunes to do dishes to. Is it what the public wants, or have standards slipped in the world of pop, as in everywhere else in the 21st century?
Ed’s trajectory from everyman busker to instantly identifiable pop god is truly the stuff of miracles or corporate dark arts.
Ever since Simon Cowell declared war on music and launched a recruitment drive to find any new talent, nullify it, and rebrand it as pure product, the ground had been cleared for an opportunist like Sheeran to come along and enjoy the fruits of Cowell’s labor.
Like an apocalyptic cash generating plague from the pages of the Old Testament, the phenomena of the talent show has laid to waste huge swathes of talented youngsters who thought singing and playing music had a deeper meaning than that of the bank balances of record company executives.
When confronted with the mind-numbing banality and vacuous horror of an industry which will chew you up and spit you out quicker than you can say, “Was that really 15 minutes sir?” many an aspiring songbird or three-chord hero has shrunk back into the shadows, battered, bloodied, and disillusioned with life in the limelight, leaving only the truly talentless centre stage.
The terrible banality of the talent show also boasted another frightful aspect in that it effortlessly closed many avenues for any new acts to become an overnight success story.
Yet, as if by magic, an almost mystical figure appeared from nowhere to do just that. And just happened to embody all that the suited men who meet in darkened corridors prize in an ‘artist.’
As was written, as was done. The chosen one was predictable, malleable, ordinary, unthreatening, uncontroversial, lacking in all spontaneity, devoid of any strange ‘otherness’, and above all, nice with a capital ‘N’!
With the terrible news that Ed Sheeran is planning to move to America. The circle is complete. The war is over, the disciple has become the master, and all, as they say, has become unsalvageable.
