Ed Sheeran: Madison Square Garden gigs proved a point

Ed Sheeran claims he wanted to play live at Madison Square Garden in New York to ”prove a point”.

The 23-year-old singer-songwriter, whose new track ‘Sing’ was played for the first time on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show last night, revealed bosses at Atlantic Records were unsure about him playing the huge US gigs so early on in his career last year but he predicted they were going to be sell-out shows.

He told Billboard mag: ”That’s why I made them hold three [dates]. I know my fan base and I can tell when something is going well. And record sales didn’t mirror ticket sales.

”People were very doubtful that I could sell out one Madison Square Garden [gig], but my reasoning for doing it was I wanted to prove a point.”

The ‘A Team’ hitmaker claims he didn’t want to end his American success being an opening act after touring with singer and close friend Taylor Swift.

He explained: ”I thought, ‘Now I’ve done the Taylor tour, I’ll probably be able to move up’. I remember the label just being like, ‘Why are you doing that?

You can’t, don’t do that, wait, wait’. ”And now whenever I visit radio stations or press or anyone in America, it’s just like, ‘Oh you did MSG’, not, ‘Oh, you sold quite a lot of records over a long period of time’. So, it’s good, it proved a point.”

Ed, who releases his second album ‘x’ on June 23, the follow-up to ‘+’ in 2011, grossed over $8 million from headlining 31 shows in 2012.

He added: ”I’ve always sold more tickets in America than records. My income is six per cent record sales. So live is kind of everything.”

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