Ed Sheeran in Nashville: 4 highlights from his double-header weekend in Music City

Ed Sheeran may be able to play a gig anywhere.

On one night, the red-headed showman from small-town England can lead a stadium-sized audience in a singalong of contagious pop hits. The next night, he could be serenading an intimate crowd with songs written during life's raw, untamed moments.

This weekend in Nashville, he did both.

Sheeran, who lived in Middle Tennessee in 2013 and 2018, returned to his self-described American "hometown" for shows Friday at the Ryman Auditorium and Saturday at Nissan Stadium. The stop comes as part of Sheeran's expansive "Mathematics" world tour, a career-spanning jaunt in support of the five-album cycle — released as "+," "-," "=," "÷," and "x" — that launched him into superstardom.

"Nashville, this feels like a homecoming show," Sheeran said Saturday at Nissan Stadium, addressing a record-setting audience of roughly 73,000 inside the venue. He continued, "I'm so glad to be back."

Read on for highlights from Sheeran's double-header weekend in Nashville.

A *massive* return to Nissan Stadium

OK, OK. It may not be groundbreaking to describe the stage at a stadium concert as massive — but Sheeran's stage was massive.

A circular, in-the-round stage stood at the 50-yard line of Nissan Stadium, surrounded by sky-high pillars covered in multi-colored screens synchronized to each song. On the stage, a rotating platform gave Sheeran a 360-degree view of his audience. Above, a massive cylinder screen magnified the singer's endless hops, skips and jumps between microphones. Safe to say, the towering pillars and all-encompassing center screen wouldn't be out of place in a sci-fi novel (or particularly tricky level in the new "Legend of Zelda" games, for Nintendo nerds.).

And Sheeran took the stage Saturday with the energy of being shot out a proverbial canon. The show opened with 2021 number "Tides" before kicking into "Blow," a one-off hard rock song backed by a string of stage-level fireballs and synchronized fireworks.

Unlike when he played solo during his 2018 tour stop at Nissan Stadium, Sheeran brought a band to Nashville for part of the "Mathematics" show — like the fiddle-aided "Galway Girl" and Khalid collaboration "Beautiful People."

But that didn't stop him from captivating the audience as a one-man entertainer, building songs on a loop pedal with manic energy and methodical concentration. Sheeran played solo much of the night, like on crowd-pleasing 2021 number "Shivers," throwback single "The A Team," the frantic late-show romp "Bloodstream" and 2011's "Give Me Love," which included a call-and-response singalong that filled the stadium concourse and likely spilled into the neighboring parking lots.

'Subtract' at the Mother Church

Sheeran conjured a much different scene Friday night at the Ryman Auditorium. Playing for an intimate audience inside the so-called Mother Church of Country Music, he delivered a two-and-half-hour show true to the storytelling tradition built for decades inside Nashville's famed downtown tabernacle.

Sheeran — backed by a six-piece string section and five-member band — performed his new album "- (Subtract)" in-full Friday, a move he's adopted in theaters coast-to-coast on nights ahead of a stadium tour stop. A sparse, sobering album that wrestles with grief and anxiety, Sheeran released "- (Subtract)" earlier this year.

Sheeran spent his time on stage Friday setting the scene for each "-(Subtract)" song; the album navigates his days after the death of a close friend, Jamal Edwards, and experiencing his wife Cherry Seaborn's life-shaking run-in with a cancerous tumor.

A few technical hiccups required Sheeran to perform completely unplugged — including opening number "Boat," which he delivered from the ledge of the Ryman stage after asking audience members to settle into a pin-dropping silence.

Dressed in a custom soccer kit and yellow Air Jordan shoes, Sheeran shared following the song, "Nashville, that is why I like playing at the Ryman Auditorium. The last time I played here was a decade ago - in 2013 - and I genuinely, hand-on-heart, believe that this is the best venue in the United States of America."

In the pews

After performing the album (plus a handful of solo hits, including pop staple "Bad Habits," gooey love tune "Perfect" and the coming-of-age hit "Castle on the Hill." He dubbed the album set "sad hour" and the hits set "happy hour," appropriately), Sheeran offered an only-in-Nashville treat for Friday night concert-goers: A live debut of two unreleased songs.

He asked audience members to pocket cell phones while performing the unnamed songs — a pair of sharp-woven stories that chronicled tender intimacy and unstoppable courtship, respectively.

Following the new music, Sheeran abandoned his microphone again before jumping into the front row of the Ryman audience to deliver a two-song finale: traditional folk number "The Parting Glass" and 2020 single, "Afterglow."

"I walked in knowing this would be the best gig of the tour and you did not disappoint," Sheeran said. After settling into a spot next to the pews, he added: "I'm really grateful about growing up with folk music so intertwined in my life. I know that in Nashville it's the same with country music and bluegrass, with all these amazing artists [coming] from here."

'The real singalongs'

Back at Nissan Stadium on Saturday, Sheeran rolled into a string of late-show hits that he coyly described on stage as "when the real singalongs begin."

He said, "I'm not saying that all the songs up to now were not the real singalongs. But the one past this point ... your grandmother knows."

Spoiler: He's right.

Sheeran kicked into mega-hit "Thinking Out Loud" before singing a rendition of Justin Bieber chart-topper "Love Yourself" (co-written by Sheeran), fan-favorite solo song "Sing" and the inescapable "Photograph."

Nearing the end of his set, Sheeran paused from his tried-and-true "Mathematics" setlist to perform a pair of songs from his time in Nashville: 2021's "First Times," which Sheeran wrote in Music City in 2018, and "Tenerife Sea," which he penned while living in Hendersonville a decade ago.

After a brief exit, Sheeran, sporting a Tennessee Titans jersey, returned for a three song encore that included two of his biggest hits: "Shape of You" and "Bad Habits" — songs that could send any audience into a frenzy, no matter where he plays 'em.

Ed Sheeran setlist - Nissan Stadium in Nashville

• Tides

• Blow

• I’m A Mess

• Shivers

• The A Team

• Castle on the Hill

• Don’t

• Eyes Closed

• Give Me Love

• Boat

• River/PERU/South of the Border/I Don't Care

• Beautiful People (with opening act Khalid)

• End of Youth

• Overpass Graffiti

• Galway Girl

• Thinking Out Loud

• Love Yourself

• Sing

• Photograph

• First Times

• Tenerife Sea

• Perfect

• Bloodstream

• Afterglow

• Encore:

• You Need Me, I Don’t Need You

• Shape of You

• Bad Habits

Ed Sheeran setlist - Ryman Auditorium

• Boat

• Salt Water

• Eyes Closed

• Life Goes On

• Dusty

• End of Youth

• Colourblind

• Curtains

• Borderline

• Spark

• Vega

• Sycamore

• No Strings

• The Hills of Aberfeldy

• The A Team

• Shivers

• Thinking Out Loud

• Perfect

• Bloodstream

• Shape of You

• Bad Habits

• Encore:

• Castle On The Hill

• (Unreleased new song)

• (Unreleased new song)

• The Parting Glass (cover)

• Afterglow

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Ed Sheeran in Nashville: 4 highlights from Nissan Stadium, Ryman concerts