Ed Sheeran, middle England's megastar bard, is a mass of contradictions, but one thing is crystal clear: he is unbelievably popular. We are spoiled for stats to prove it, but here are two: Sheeran has the most Spotify followers of any artist on the planet (10 million more than Taylor Swift, his good friend and closest competitor); he has been the most played artist in the UK for six out of the last eight years. His debut, + (Plus), was the UK's third bestselling album of 2012 - but he was largely viewed as trite teen girl fodder. Then there was a serious step up in 2014, the year the Suffolk-bred singer-songwriter scored his first UK No 1 single with Sing. That year he would also become Spotify's most-streamed artist in the world. With his newfound sliver of edge and clever genre-blending, he had proven he was ready to step out of his troubadour-next-door box and into full pop star mode.
Yet Sheeran went further than just becoming a pop star - he ended up reshaping pop stardom in his own scruffy, unassuming image. The intervening decade of pop has belonged to the 33-year-old: his ability to exist across multiple binaries at once - earnest/calculated, eclectic/bland, ordinary/ exceptional - means his career has dictated, fuelled and intertwined with practically all the major developments in modern music. The story of his unit-shifting ubiquity is also the story of contemporary pop- and a roadmap for its future.
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