We only decided to go to Ed Sheeran’s Manchester show a week before the show itself. Over dinner. We got our tickets from Twickets and on the 24th of May, after our IP law paper, Ee Min, Yee Lin, Ash, Jia Yang, CC and I headed for Etihad Stadium.
Getting to the stadium proved to be an issue in itself at first. Manchester Metrolink had special security measures for an event day as big as Ed Sheeran’s concert apparently, and it took us about an hour of waiting time just to get on a tram, and we eventually only did so by forcefully squeezing our way into the absolutely jam-packed carriages. It was a highly uncomfortable 20-minute ride and you could see everyone audibly gasp for air the moment the tram doors opened upon arrival at Etihad.
Ed’s entrance onto the stage was…to be honest, quite befitting of his super humble character. No fanfare or anything fancy like that. He appeared, got on stage, and immediately started singing. A man who gets straight to the point.
Just gonna outright admit that the songs of his that I was most familiar with were entirely from his + album from eons ago, a distant phase of my life. It reminded me of driving in my car after freshly acquiring my license for the first time at 17, and gushing about his music with Irfan back in college. It felt quite surreal, like a clashing of worlds.
But I’m glad I got to make new memories to associate with his newer songs, in his actual literal presence at that.
Michelle’s People I’ve Watched Live List, updated:
- Paramore (19/10/2010)
- Elton John (22/11/2011)
- OneRepublic (31/10/2013)
- Last Dinosaurs (23/11/2013)
- Tegan and Sara (23/11/2013)
- Franz Ferdinand (24/11/2013)
- Halsey (22/2/2016)
- The 1975 (13/3/2016)
- The Temper Trap (27/5/2016)
- Coldplay (4/6/2016)
- BTS (6/8/2016)
- Bastille (6/11/2016)
- The xx (5/3/2017)
- Lorde (26/9/2017)
- Gorillaz (1/12/2017)
- ONE OK ROCK (12/12/2017)
- Sam Smith (27/3/2018)
- Ed Sheeran (24/5/2018)
michelle teoh 