MUMBAI: We did not expect grand, but definitely expected an Ed Sheeran night and Mumbai got 90-minutes of the international star and he made every second of that time count. 

Sheeran began his performance at 8 pm and it went on till 9:30 pm. In between his performances, he also tried to interact with Mumbai and the city responded. There was no glamour attached to his India visit as he walked up on the stage in a turquoise coloured kurta that promoted the purpose of his tour – the promotion of Divide album – with Divide written both in English and Hindi. He did not change his attire too many times during his performance, but he did change the guitars, his loyal companions through the concert. The guitars too very clearly promoted the Divide, Multiply and Plus albums of Sheeran. They had the signs on the guitars according to the songs he played.

To make the concert livelier British crooner asked his fans to sing along. He also made sure that none of the elements around stopped them from making the best of their night with him. He spoke about all the possible factors that could stop one from enjoying but one shouldn’t. In fact, at a point, he even mentioned that the all attendees should take part and sing along. And, yes, he had his loyalists taking care of the concert spoilers, if any in the crowd.

 Sheeran sang Bloodstream, Happier, Photograph, Sing, Galway Girl, Perfect, Thinking Out Loud and many more songs. In total there were 18 of his chartbusters and they were indeed a treat.

To tease his fans a bit Sheeran announced the end of the concert before even getting to the song that sold those 10,000 BookMyShow tickets to his concert, Shape Of You.  Groans and moans were heard all around as he left the stage, leaving everyone dumbstruck with disbelief.  However, he was just playing the tease - he came back in double quick time wearing the official Indian cricket team's colours. To everyone's delight, his guitar strings played out the tune of Shape of You and got the crowd on their feet. And the final song of the night was You Need Me, I Don’t Need You.

“Sheeran took the concert to a different level with the last song,” said a concertgoer.

At the end of it all, the audience couldn’t help but compare Sheeran to Justin Bieber and the former got more votes. The concert was definitely not as grand as Bieber’s, but it had more soul. There was no lip-syncing or itching. There was Sheeran strumming the guitar and jumping on the console on and off to keep the energy flowing and his fans kept dancing and singing to his songs.

What was interesting to see was that Sheeran had a lot of young fans in the audience, something you would just expect for a Bieber concert and that did take us by surprise. They were the ones who knew every word of his songs by heart and they sang along. There were many who did not know it all, but Sheeran kept them engaged.

“We did not know all the songs because we finalised on the concert last minute, but we loved him,” said two young girls at the venue.

The only trouble points of this concert were no screens for the Gold and Silver ticket holders. The ones’ in the Diamond area had a clear view of Sheeran, but the one behind couldn’t view him clearly. There was a huge screen on the stage that kept throwing pictures that were a mix of creatives and Sheeran, but they did not project the live performance. We just feel a few more screens could have added some joy to the Gold and Silver ticket holders.

The food counters too had huge queues; we think they could have moved a bit faster with more attendants. In fact, TV star Ram Kapoor was seen standing in the long queue to buy refreshments for his family. The star was there with his kids and wife Gautami Kapoor. 

Another highlight of the concert was American musician, Lauv’s performance. The singer was on stage for a good 40 minutes and he did entertain the audience before Sheeran's arrival. Many in the crowd heard him for the first time, but he got their attention and their applause.

Overall it was a spectacular night!