On April 17 2023, in the runup to the release of his album Subtract and as a warmup to performing the album on tour, Ed Sheeran played an intimate concert at Admiralspalast, Berlin. Ed Sheeran normally plays stadiums. Admiralspalast has a capacity of 1500. Berliner Zeitung comments that Sheeran could have played to a Berlin audience 100 times bigger.
Radio Hamburg reports that the audience listened closely to the Subtract songs, but the mood was a little somber due to the subject matter and the tracks being new. Radio Hamburg continues, “But then Ed Sheeran flipped the switch & was like, ‘Now it’s enough being sad, let’s party’.” By all accounts, Afterglow at the end of the gig was the highlight. Ed invites fan, Annemarie, onstage around the 3:00 minute mark scroll down for another angle.
What a stupendous unplanned performance from the audience member! Besides having a modest capacity, Admiralspalast also had a 10pm curfew requiring Sheeran to turn off all technology and microphones. Rather than truncate his performance by the clock, Ed wanted to carry on singing. Sheeran made his way to the middle of the audience where there happened to be a “kind of platform” (possibly for photographers?). Standing surrounded by his fans, he sang a few songs including Perfect and The A Team.
As we’ve seen in the video, Ed Sheeran moved onto a mostly acapella traditional Irish song The Parting Glass to signify the impending end of the performance, before segueing into Afterglow as a finale. As Sheeran tells it, during the first verse of Afterglow he overheard a young woman next to him singing the second voice. “Come on, sing it!” he said as the woman was helped onto the platform. Since the live unplugged version of Afterglow is so good, here is another audience video shot from a different angle
The above video was posted by the young woman with the great voice, Annemarie Schmidt. Under the video she writes: “When an incredibly special concert by your greatest musical role model with only 1500 people becomes an unforgettable memory. I am so thankful for this moment and will carry it in my heart forever. What can I say: ‘Stop the clocks it’s amazing’ .”
Interviewed by DASDING, Annemarie said that she was entirely unaware that Sheeran heard her singing along. She added that she is surprised by how relaxed she comes across in the video and that it was like a movie playing in front of her eyes.
For his part, Ed Sheeran has confirmed that it wasn’t planned at all. “She did an incredible job,” he said. “Thank you for ending this special concert with me, I loved it.” Well done Annemarie Schmidt! And for goodness sake Ed Sheeran, stop being such a nice guy all the time.
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