So where’s the fury about Ed Sheeran headlining on the Sunday night at this year’s Glastonbury? Where’s the righteous uproar that someone imbued with all the authentic rock’n’roll brio of a busking Furby is going to be the last man standing, serenading the crowds at the self-styled most important music festival in the world?
I’m not a fan of Glastonbury: too many wimps pretending to be wild, too many dullards pretending to be interesting, too many Portaloos pretending to be sanitary. Take away the mud and the hype and it’s clear that Glastonbury has evolved into part-nightmarish car boot sale of cultural mores, part-adult creche for tiring faux-bohemian poseurs who think that hiring a yurt for the weekend makes them the new Timothy Leary.
Still, lots of people seem to think that Glastonbury is an important date in the live music calendar, so why aren’t they upset about the Sheeran booking? While some have been rolling their eyes, the general reaction seems to be fairly low-key. Instead of the anticipated online re-enactment of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, there’s a kind of “What can you do?” shrug, which says it all about the era of Sheeran, that is doomed to go down as a period in cultural history where music was instructed to behave, play nice and, above all, don’t make too much noise.
I don’t want to sneer unfairly at Sheeran, so let’s sneer fairly at him. Even in the context of his era and genre, Sheeran doesn’t cut it as the male Adele – another controversial Glastonbury headliner. Sheeran peddles nauseating, derivative, saccharine songs that make peak period Enya sound like Kraftwerk. For all his oft-trumpeted global-stellar-blah-blah success, he still comes across like an X Factor contestant who failed to get through the first audition because they sang the wrong Donovan song. For all his bloke down the pub demeanour, he still has the whiff of a “suit” just canny enough to invest in a guitar strap festooned with CND symbols. For all the “units shifted”, what I’ve heard of the recent mega-selling ÷ still sounds like a singing omelette that’s been flipped one too many times and landed on the Radio 1 turntable.
Despite this, I don’t begrudge Sheeran his success. Truly. There should be a place for artists like him – it just shouldn’t be Practically The Entire Music Industry. It’s no coincidence that his rise slid comfortably into the wailing vortex formed by the industry falling to pieces – yes, because of the seismic tech/format changes, but also because these days everyone is so busy looking for the next Ed Sheeran that barely any other kinds of acts get a look-in. Which explains why there’s presently a cultural infestation of male-female singer-songwriters tediously strumming-whining away in what I’ve privately come to term the “smelly cat” genre, only without the humour and self-awareness of Friends’ Phoebe Buffay.
While this isn’t his fault, this is the Sheeran effect on modern music – boring, corporate, swamping, numbing. Yet, apparently, this isn’t gruesome and alarming enough for people to be up in arms about him headlining Glastonbury. Compare and contrast with the disgraceful treatment of first Jay Z and then Beyoncé, when they became the Glastonbury headline slots in 2008 and 2011 respectively. Both artists received a lot of aggro for performing black art centre stage at “what’s supposed to be all about guitar music”.
During both these shameful episodes, the point was repeatedly made that it wasn’t anything to do with Jay Z and Beyoncé being black artists; it was a question of genre and context, in that these acts simply weren’t about celebrating rock’n’roll. So is Sheeran now considered rock’n’roll? If he is, then the music industry is in even more parlous shape than I suspected. And if he isn’t considered rock’n’roll, then why is everyone so quiet?
