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10 Years Ago Today: Ed Sheeran - Lego House

Writer's picture: Michael BrennanMichael Brennan

As reflected in my previous blog post, today marks the five year anniversary of the day Leonard Cohen's death - which occurred four days before - was announced to the world. The famous poet behind the iconic song, "Hallelujah", which raised the roof for me in my school assembly performance in July 2012, and was later featured on my debut self-titled album released in 2015 and a covers compilation album released the following year. Alongside that was another song, which turns 10 years old today, "Lego House" by Ed Sheeran; another artist who covered "Hallelujah" - in his first ever live performance in Germany in 2011. While Ed's version of "Hallelujah" definitely has a Jeff Buckley-esque feel to it, it does incorporate some of the original lyrics from Leonard's version, but I have no doubt that he was a fan of the John Cale version - my personal favourite version of the song - from Shrek as well! After all, he did reference the film in the song "Wake Me Up". 🎶 I know you love Shrek, 'cos we've watched it twelve times, but maybe you're hoping for a fairy tale too. And if your DVD breaks today, you should've bought a VCR, because I've never owned a Blue-ray. 🎶

Released first in September 2011, as the ninth track on Ed's debut album, + - one of my favourite albums of all time - "Lego House"was later released on Remembrance Day - the eleventh month of the eleventh day of the eleventh year - as the third single from the album; proceeding the summer releases of "The A Team" and "You Need Me, I Don't Need You". It is signature for its famous music video, starring Rupert Grint (Ron Weasley) from Harry Potter, and was co-written by multi-platinum songwriter/producer Jake Gosling (Lady GaGa, The Libertines, One Direction, Christina Perri, Wiley) and Chris Leonard (Paolo Nutini, Shania Twain) both of whom also penned the album's closing track and final single,"Give Me Love".

Next to John Mayer, Ed Sheeran is inarguably the most influential singer-songwriter of my generation, and even I can't deny the influence and inspiration he has been to me, as well as other young musicians my age; such as Shawn Mendes, who was born three months before me. However, some people may be led to the misconception that he inspired me to start playing guitar, when the truth is I had already been drawn to the acoustic guitar at the age of twelve, before Ed made his mainstream debut in the charts with "The A Team" in June 2011, by my Bower Grove School music LSA, Toby Starks - lead singer and lead guitarist of local Kent bands, Wheeler Street, The Starks Family Band and The Lowly Strung - who would later end up collaborating with me on my cover of "Lego House". First and foremost though, it was Elvis Presley who made me see just how much fun playing guitar could be, and boy, Elvis sure could play - as Chuck Berry would say, "He could play a guitar just like a-ringin' a bell" ("Johnny B. Goode"), a lyric Ed referenced in his song "Nina" - the fifth track from the album x (2014) - written about his ex-girlfriend and singer/songwriter Nina Nesbitt, who was also the subject of "Photograph" - the sixth track and fifth and final single from x - and starred in the music video for "Drunk", the second track and fourth single from +. Nevertheless, seeing Ed perform "The A Team" on an episode of The Crush - through which I discovered him - on 4music in the summer of 2011 was definitely a formative moment for me - somewhat similar to how former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher felt after seeing Johnny Marr perform "This Charming Man" with The Smiths on Top Of The Pops in 1983.


I still remember buying + on CD from HMV when it first came out in September 2011, and I also had a digital copy of the album - purchased from iTunes - on my iPod and would listen to it religiously everywhere and all the time. By November, I got my first acoustic guitar for my thirteenth birthday, and would play - or at least, attempt to play - along to the songs from the album. Funnily enough,"Lego House" wasn't actually my favourite track to begin with, "The A Team" was. In fact, it was actually that song that me and Mr. Starks were originally planning to perform in the school assembly in July 2012, alongside "Hallelujah". I still remember rehearsing it with Mr. Starks, who accompanied me on acoustic guitar, and he would spend ages throughout our sessions trying to teach me the vocal runs - 🎶It's too cold outside🎶 - when Ed goes into falsetto. I would go home after school after our sessions and listen to the song over and over again, whilst closely focusing in on the vocal runs, and constantly rewinding the track over and over again trying to mimic them. Indeed, the song was very difficult to learn, not just vocally, but the timing was also very hard, and by the time me and Mr. Starks finally got the hang of it we were told to choose another song, as "The A Team" wasn't appropriate to be performed in school, due to its drug referencing, which thus also ruled out "Drunk" as a potential alternative song too. I was also told to change the lyric "moved in you" from "Hallelujah" to "moved with you". You can probably guess why!


And of course, we ended up performing "Lego House" which we subsequently recorded a studio cover of that was published to YouTube - alongside our studio cover of "Hallelujah" - in January 2012, which we followed up with an acoustic remake in 2014. The original cover was later featured as the fifth track on my debut self-titled album released in 2015, while both versions were included on my covers compilation album released the following year.

"Lego House is about that moment in a relationship when you realise where it's going and you want to save it. I tried to be creative and imaginative, using Lego as a metaphor for the relationship" - Ed Sheeran, A Visual Journey (2014)


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