Ed Sheeran says being a songwriter has not only brought him fame and success but has also been a source of therapy for him.
The star from Suffolk, England, also revealed that he always like to stay in touch with his Irish roots and makes time to see his relatives whenever he is in Ireland.
Sheeran was appearing on the BBC’s Desert Island Discs in 2017, which invites celebrities to talk about which songs they would want to take with them If they were to be stranded on a desert island.
He told presenter Kirsty Young: “I come from an Irish family, spent most of my childhood summers and birthdays and Christmases in Ireland listening to trad music bands.”
Sheeran says that he writes four to five songs every day – and that the process can be very therapeutic when times are hard.
He said: “No thought process, just get a guitar and write a song. 12 out of a hundred might be any good and that’s all you really need for an album
“Anytime I’ve felt low, the one thing that picks me up is writing a song about it. As soon as it’s out of me on a song, I kind of move on.”
He revealed that no matter how hard he tries to resist it, it is inevitable that his fame and success will change him a little – if only due to how other people now treat him.
He said: “You strive for normality. As soon as you find success, everyone starts treating you as supernormal because they’re going a bit over the top to show you everything’s cool. And then people start changing toward you, you start getting paranoid about it and then you basically get to a point where you have changed.”
The 26-year-old also revealed that he was worried about his latest song ‘Galway Girl’ because Steve Earl had already written a song with the same name.
He said: “I actually tried to find another lyric. I did Wexford Girl and Clonakilty Girl and Cork Girl… none of them worked. But the whole point of folk songs is taking inspiration from the past and making something new – so people will just have to deal with it.
“It was based on the fiddle player in Beoga, (traditional group) Niamh [Dunne]. She’s married to an Irishman, a friend of mine. I had the band in my house for an extra day so I was like, ‘what can I write about? She plays the fiddle in an Irish band… right, cool, let’s write a song about that.’ She inspired the first line but the rest of the song isn’t about anyone, I just made up a story.”
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