The image of Sheeran as more of pop music’s chief marketing officer, a songwriting scientist who makes surefire chart-shredding hits in a lab, rather than a humble singer-songwriter trying to express his creativity, is one he has heard about innumerable times before.
Sheeran is sharp enough to get why some critics might think like this. Sheeran gets the cred through association and Big Michael gets a leg up and into some of Sheeran’s multibillion-strong global audience.
If one assumes their core fan bases are vastly different – although there is inarguably overlap in that pop Venn diagram – then one might suspect the pair’s relationship is less about a friendship and more of a business partnership. Case in point: for some, even saying the names “Stormzy” and “Ed Sheeran” in the same sentence still feels like something of a trick like, there must be money involved.
