Ed Sheeran shares his approach to building a music career: set audacious goals like outselling Adele, treat failure as fuel for bigger opportunities, and think in decades, not years. He quit social media for his mental health, writes songs as personal therapy rather than chasing hits, and measures success by how a live audience reacts, not chart positions.
Chapters
I want to be bigger than Adele.
That should be your goal.
Yeah, the word Adele is just something that no one should fuck with, basically. What's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you fail. I've only written songs from the heart. I want to keep having stuff to do every day.
Is that in your story? Or is everything new?
What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have the ability to do something special that can change the planet. Planet. So to help you on your journey today, we're going to learn from singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran and my take on his top 10 rules for success, volume 2. Rule number 1 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. Now, I read that your goal is to sell 20 million copies of this album, Divide, and you want to overtake Adele in terms of record sales.
Yeah, and I feel like me saying this, a lot of people were like, that's such an arrogant thing to say and blah, blah, blah. But I think you need to choose someone that's at the top of the game. Like, I probably won't sell 20 million records, and I probably won't ever be as big as Adele. But if you don't aim for the top of the mountain, how are you ever going to get halfway?
Right, and set high goals for yourself.
Yeah.
So—
But the problem is that my point never comes across with that because that quote is now I want to be bigger than Adele.
That should be your goal.
Yeah, the word Adele is just something that no one should fuck with, basically. So if you put that into any sentence, prepare to be, like, shot down. I don't play with a band. I use a sample pedal, which is all live and built up. So Wembley was always like— even an arena, I thought I couldn't do an arena. But then when I did an arena and it was fine, I was like, well, we might as well try Wembley. Like, it's not— what's the worst that could happen? The worst that could happen is you fail. Yeah. But you still sold Wembley. So the worst that could happen is you fail and you move back to the arenas, which is not— you know, that's what everyone else does. So that's like a— it's quite a cool thing. How many people were there? It was 87,000 every night. 87,000. Yeah, it's a big old stadium. It's a big old stadium. But the thing is, like, if you fail, you've not lost anything. And if you achieve and make it good, the possibilities are endless. How imposing is social media on your life? Did you just get sick of it? You just wanted to detox? No, because, you know, I enjoy getting diving into it and kind of being on it, but it's just quite toxic to be— you just end up getting really self-conscious about yourself. And I'm not like a— I wasn't a hugely self-conscious guy before, and then you just read into everything and like you kind of end up searching for people slagging you off and like looking for people saying mean things. Yeah. And since I've been off it, it's been glorious. I want a 30-year career, not a 5-year career. I don't want to do it all up. You know, we could have done stadiums a lot earlier on. We could have done arenas a lot earlier on. We could have released 5 albums in 5 years. But it's a marathon, not a sprint. And I remember being around a lot of my contemporaries that were doing so much better than me and my manager being like, just slow down, just slow down, slow down. And now I'm still here 6 years on and they're not. And I think, like, the whole The whole music industry, you just need to just pace yourself. Just take time to make great albums. You don't have to stick out music all the time to stay relevant. You'll stay relevant by making great records, and to make great records, you have to spend a lot of time to do them. I've only written songs from the heart. I don't really see the point of making music if it's not an expression of self or a form of therapy, you know. It's like, if I have a bad day, I want to write a song. I don't want to write a song to have a hit. I want to write a song because I want it to make me feel better. So yeah, it's never been about the audience or pleasing people or trying to fit in. It's just been about myself and my love for music. And I guess that has come across. I think this album is very much— it's rooted in my comfort zone, but there are certain times where I step out of the comfort zone. And the reason I chose Sing as the sort of lead single for it, that being step out of the comfort zone, is I had an acoustic ballad song I wanted to put out first. And whenever I played it to people, they were like, 'No, it's nice, yeah, really cool, really nice song.' When you played 'Sing to People,' it really polarised everyone. They were like, they either hated it or they loved it, but they spoke about it a lot. You know, we'd speak to people and they'd be like, 'Oh yeah, I heard about that song because so-and-so was talking about it,' but no one was talking about the acoustic tune. So I thought by sticking out a song that sort of makes people talk, it would be a lot better for the album. I do work hard and I do try and keep keep going, but it could be a lot worse. This is the best job that I could possibly have, and I, I could be working in a supermarket or something. Like, this is, this is the, the days off that don't exist are because I don't want them to exist. I want to keep having stuff to do every day. It excites me to travel around the world and play for people that genuinely love my music and smile, and they're all happy, and people are nice to me when we do interviews and stuff. It's, it's good. I've made this album on tour and I'm making the next album on tour and it's about finding the time. Like, I've got a producer to bring a mobile studio into every dressing room that I go into and every hotel room and on the tour bus. So in between doing meet and greets and the gig, you'll try and write a song and then after the gig you'll try and write a song and then on the bus journey to the next place you'll try and write a song. So it's about finding the time to make it happen. For me, success is always stepping out on stage and feeling people genuinely happy to hear your songs. Yeah, that's always been when I know a song's a hit is when you play it and a crowd, you just see people light up in the crowd and smile. I think that's how you know, rather than seeing stats and figures. Stats and figures are great as well to look at. You know, everyone needs their ego massage sometimes, but I think the gigs, gigs are the ones.
What's happening, Ed?
I'm just gonna go sing with someone.
Should I just roll up? Roll up, roll up. Take me into your loving arms. Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars. Place your head on my beating heart. Think it out loud. Maybe we found love right where we are.
Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Hussam Ezi asked me to. If there's someone you'd like to vote on for the next top 10, check out the link in the description and go and have your say. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Jason Bean. Jason, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, You're One Weird word and for posting a video about it on your YouTube channel. I really appreciate the support, man, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the read.
There it is, your one word, Evan Carmichael's.
So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.
Embrace your quirks and embrace your weirdness. And from a stuttering point of view, don't treat it as an issue, you know. Work through it and get the treatment that you want to get, but don't ever treat it as an issue and don't see it as a plight on your life. The thing that makes you cool is, as you said earlier, not giving a fuck. And I'm never going to hide the fact that I'm a very competitive person. I do want this to be the biggest album in the world. And I'm gonna make sure it is the biggest album in the world. There's gonna be no, no stone left unturned.
I love that you have totally stayed true to yourself in your songs, with your style, just with your career in general. So if you could, I would like to know how you would encourage other young 20-somethings to stay true to themselves without letting other people bring them down.
Um, no one can be you better than you can. I know that's quite a, quite an obvious thing, but I think, I think people forget that people try to model themselves on what, on what other people are doing. And like, everyone has their flaws, and flaws are what make you human.
