Review: Ed Sheeran brings live looping to his Petco Park concert in San Diego

As the sun dipped behind the left-field stands at Petco Park on Tuesday evening, English singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran stepped onto the stage with little more than a guitar, microphone and looping pedals. On the San Diego stop of the North American leg of his international “Loop Tour,” Sheeran became the first solo acoustic artist to headline Petco Park, transforming the stadium into an intimate concert hall.

Sheeran’s 28-song set spanned nearly every era of his career, blending fan favorites with songs from his latest album, “Play.” What made the performance remarkable, however, was its live looping. Using a pedal station at his feet, Sheeran built each song in real time, layering guitar, percussion, harmonies and vocals into a surprisingly full stadium sound.

“Everything you hear tonight is done on this loop pedal here. It’s all made live on the spot. There’s no backing track whatsoever. It’s all made with this microphone, this guitar, and controlled with my feet,” Sheeran told the crowd at the largely full stadium.

Fans roared as the opening loops of “Castle on the Hill,” and “Don’t” grew from a single guitar riffs into rich, multi-layered performances. A live camera projected the looping station onto the center-field screen, inviting the audience into the recording process. Fortunately, the intense heat that had baked the stadium during the opening sets by Aaron Rowe, Sigrid and Myles Smith had mostly subsided by the time Sheeran took the stage at 8:02 p.m.

Throughout the show, Sheeran used an extendable bridge between the main stage and the B stage to lead the stadium audience in layered vocal harmonies, turning the crowd into part of the performance. During “Camera,” he playfully asked fans to take a photo after singing, “I don’t need a camera to capture this moment,” prompting a sea of phone lights across the stadium.

“It’s just great for an artist to look out and see people united in music,” said Sheeran, who was dressed in a white T-shirt and black pants.

The concert’s visuals on the main screen were equally ambitious, evolving from hand-drawn, sketch-like graphics to hyper-realistic animations. While some later animated visuals felt distracting and at odds with the music, personal moments like the family photos shown during “Photograph” added warmth and emotion, complementing the song rather than competing with it.

Acoustic, loop-free favorites were woven throughout the set, bringing moments of intimacy to the stadium-sized performance. “Perfect,” “Supermarket Flowers” and the fan-requested “Sunburn” stripped the production back to just Sheeran and his guitar on the B stage, where he performed alone amid a sea of fans. The crowd swayed and sang every word, creating some of the night’s most memorable moments.

Before performing “The A Team,” the song he wrote at 17 that launched his career, Sheeran reflected on its journey from small venues to a sold-out stadium. Its lyrics depict the story of a woman struggling with drug abuse who he met while performing in 2011 at a homeless shelter.

“I’ve played this song in empty rooms, I’ve played this song in half-full rooms, and I get to play this song on a Tuesday night in a sold-out baseball stadium,” Sheeran said.

The moment reflected the lasting appeal of Sheeran’s music, connecting longtime fans with a younger generation of listeners. He brought warmth to his loop-free numbers and sang in a rich, strong voice on his more upbeat pop songs.

About halfway through the set, Irish folk band Beoga joined Sheeran for six songs, including the co-written favorites “Galway Girl” and “Nancy Mulligan.” Their fiddle melodies and traditional instrumentation added a distinct Celtic sound to the otherwise solo performance.

Sheeran also reflected on his songwriting journey, sharing how rejection and personal hardship have shaped his music. In a seven-minute medley, he performed songs he wrote for other artists, including “Eastside,” “2002,” “Cold Water” and “Love Yourself”, before discussing the stories behind more personal tracks like “Eyes Closed,” inspired by the loss of a close friend, and “Old Phone,” written during his 2015 music copyright trial — he prevailed in 2023.

“This is what I love about songwriting,” Sheeran said. “You can be malleable and move into different genres and try different things.”

For the 23rd song of the night, singer-songwriter Alex Warren — a Carlsbad native — made a surprise appearance to perform his Grammy-nominated hit “Ordinary” with Sheeran. The pair traded verses with ease, their voices blending naturally and providing one of the evening’s biggest unexpected moments.

As the show stretched past 10:15 p.m., some fans began to trickle out, but Sheeran thanked those who had made the effort to attend a weeknight concert. The appreciation echoed throughout the evening, from his encouraging sing-alongs to repeatedly reminding the audience, “If you know the words, please sing it! If you don’t know the words, make them up!”

After a brief 30-second pause, Sheeran returned to the main stage wearing a Padres jersey with “Sheeran” and the number 26 across the back. He closed his 28-song set with the high-energy trio of “Shape of You,” “Azizam” and “Bad Habits,” as the crowd sang, danced and erupted into cheers beneath a fireworks finale.

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