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The A Team — Ed Sheeran
Ed Sheeran has written many more commercially successful songs than “The A Team”, but he’s never written a better song.
“The A Team” launched Ed Sheeran’s career back in 2011. And he’s gone on to release worldwide chart-toppers like “Perfect”, “The Shape Of You” and the Grammy-winning “Thinking Out Loud” in the years since.
He’s one of the most recognisable, and most successful, recording artists on the planet, and the UK’s Official Chart Company named him the recording artist of the 2010s for spending more weeks in the British charts during that decade than any other artist.
By any standard, that’s quite a career. I wouldn’t say I was a raving fan of all of his songs, but I’m most definitely a raving fan of “The A Team”, the song that got him started.
Ed Sheeran wrote “The A Team” a couple of years before his career really took off. He was inspired to write it after a charity gig he played at a homeless shelter. Back then he was just a scruffy lad with a guitar who nobody had heard of, so he got chatting to the people there and listened to their stories.
His conversation with one young woman inspired him to write “The A Team”. And I like the way he’s stated that he changed some of the details because he didn’t want to steal someone else’s story. That’s quite a respectful thing to do for someone he was very unlikely ever to see again.
I also like that it took a few years for the song to get traction. Any sooner and it might have seemed a little exploitative, but with the passage of time, and some emotional distance, “The A Team” matured into a song which raises a number of important issues without becoming intrusive.
And the lyrics are exquisitely written…
White lips, pale face
Breathing in snowflakes
Burnt lungs, sour taste
Light’s gone, day’s end
Struggling to pay rent
Long nights, strange men
“The A Team” is the tale of an addict who has resorted to selling her favours in order to feed her habit, but Ed Sheeran observes the situation so empathetically, there’s no judgement in his lyrics. She’s just doing what she feels she has to do for what she needs.
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