Ed Sheeran.Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images
The New York City subway system is full of surprises — sometimes, those surprises are less appealing, like the slice-toting rodent pizza rat. But other times, the commute includes a surprise performance fromEd Sheeran.
That’s what happened on Monday at the Church Avenue station in Brooklyn, where famed subway singer Mike Yung was shocked to find Sheeran casually join him for a duet on the platform.
Sheeran then approached from behind, telling Yung, “I f—ing love you, you’re great” as he went in for a hug.
“You’re the man,” Yung told Sheeran, 32, as the British singer harmonized with Yung’s vocals before a small crowd of fans.
Once they finished, Sheeran offered Yung tickets to his show that night at Kings Theatre, which the singer happily took him up on. He shared photos of his tickets and video from the concert to his Instagram page later that night.
“NYC subway legend@mikeyungperformed@teddysphotosnew song ‘Eyes Closed’ and got a pretty cool surprise in the process,” @subwaycreatures captioned the video.
Sheeran later shared the video to his own Instagram Story, writing, “Much love.”
“Eyes Closed” is the lead single off the star’s forthcoming album-(Subtract), which is due out May 5.
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Written several years ago, “Eyes Closed” first began as a break-up song. But, after the February 2022 death ofhis friend and mentor Jamal Edwards, Sheeran saw the lyrics take on a whole new meaning.
“This song is about losing someone, feeling like every time you go out and you expect to just bump into them, and everything just reminds you of them and the things you did together,” Sheeran said in a statement. “You sorta have to take yourself out of reality sometimes to numb the pain of loss, but certain things just bring you right back into it.”
In themusic video for the song, Sheeran’s grief is personified as a blue monster that follows him during a night out.
Ed Sheeran.Annie Leibovitz
“Often sadness is something that follows you around, engulfing the rooms you’re in, and you can feel and see it, but no one else around you can,” he continued. “So I decided to create my own big blue monster for the video. He gets bigger and bigger as the video goes on, ‘til he takes up whole rooms, and is all I can see, just like sadness.”
As for the color blue, Sheeran previously wrote in a March 15 Instagram that it “was Jamal’s color.”
“Now [it’s] all I feel,” he wrote. “And I guess music helps heal, so I’m dancing with my eyes closed to try get through it.”
Like with “Eyes Closed,” the rest of Sheeran’s upcoming album touches on a variety of hardships he faced around the same time, including Edwards’ death and a health scare involving wife Cherry Seaborn, who was diagnosed with a tumor during her most recent pregnancy.
source: people.com
