Nobody does it like Ed Sheeran live. The man is one of the top concert draws in the world for a reason. Sheeran showed off his mastery of the live arena with his performance of “Bad Habits” on the 2024 Mathematics Tour. The English star has got his one-man band format down to a fine art form at this point and showed off his skills by mixing multiple guitar layers with keyboard and vocals like only he can.
The crowd responded just as you’d expect, by absolutely losing it. To have the ability to get an entire stadium jumping up and down as a one-man band is just wild. You also gotta give it up to Sheeran for converting the full synthpop arrangement of “Bad Habits” into a live looping arrangement while keeping the essence of the song intact. Here at The Music Man we’re sure glad to see Sheeran delivering so many great live cuts from The Mathematics Tour for free on YouTube.
Sheeran uploaded his live version of “Bad Habits” on December 27, 2024. Fans gave plenty of love for the English singer-songwriter below the video, adding comments such as “A true genius. He doesn’t need any backup on the stage because he created a way to do it himself and so well” and “The stage is his kingdom and his music an explosion of energy. Impossible to stay still.”
Sheeran has given several memorable performances of “Bad Habits” since he dropped the track in 2021. One of the most popular live cuts of the song on YouTube is when the Englishman teamed up with his countrymen in Bring Me the Horizon to deliver a completely reworked version of the song at the 2022 BRIT Awards. Hearing Bring Me the Horizon frontman Oli Sykes tear it up with his signature sing-scream vocals in duet with Sheeran’s smoother vocals was really something.
Sheeran released “Bad Habits” on June 25, 2021, as the lead single from his fourth studio album =. He co-wrote the song with Fred Gibson and Johnny McDaid, with the three songwriters also producing the song together. It won’t surprise The Music Man readers to hear that “Bad Habits” proved to be yet another huge hit for Sheeran, as it topped the charts in 28 countries, including the UK, Germany, Canada, and much of Europe. The single was the highest-selling single of 2021 in the UK and Ireland, and also hit the top of Billboard’s Global 200.