5. Ed Sheeran
In a world where every white, male teenager seems to possess a headful of tousled locks and an acoustic guitar, Ed Sheeran is genuinely a major star. His two albums to date have seen him sell out stadiums, flog barrow-loads of records and become so utterly ubiquitous that it’s a surprise to open your bathroom door in the morning and not find him leaning against the shower door, tuning up.
While it would be fair to say that many of Sheeran’s tracks are wet enough to be the national anthem of Atlantis, it was never his tunes that held him back – it was all about image in the early days. The flame-haired warbler has stated that he was rejected by every single label he approached in the early days of his career, largely for being “chubby and ginger”. For an industry where you are judged more on how you look rather than how you sound, this is a depressing indictment of short-sightedness. With Ed rolling in cash and awards, it’s fair to say that the executives have yet to see the funny side, rather like the radio audience who hear Thinking Out Loud every five minutes of a long car journey.
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