Ed Sheeran with Maze Williams as Arya Stark. Photo: HBO
During his 2022 tour of the UK and Ireland, Ed Sheeran was keen to remind his audience that he's not just a global pop star in a scruffy hoodie. «I've always been a big nerd,» he told the crowd as he introduced «I See Fire,» his ballad of molten power written for Peter Jackson's second film, The Hobbit. “I had no friends as a child. I was into Pokémon, Warhammer and Lord of the Rings.»
Sheeran's nerdy track record stretches back to Game of Thrones, of which he is a big fan. Oddly enough, he forgot to mention it on stage. And while he references his love for Xena: Warrior Princess in the new documentary Ed Sheeran: The Sum of Everything (which in turn predates his latest album, Subtraction), he again misses the opportunity to mention Thrones. It's like he's denying something.
What Sheeran denies is his cameo in the seventh season of Game of Thrones, which caused both him and Thrones to get a more traumatic reaction than the violin solo in Galway Girl.
He came to the Thrones at a difficult moment. By 2017, when Sheeran traveled to Westeros, the Game of Thrones fandom was in a state of near constant hysteria. Primark flogged the upholstered furniture of the Baratheon House; Starbucks in the US offered free coffee to customers who ordered coffee at High Valyrian. The excitement got out of control. What a strange time to live.
It was definitely weird for Sheeran. Participation in the «Game of Thrones» was supposed to be another feather in the hat of the usual pop giant. Instead, it provoked a colossal backlash from both Sheeran, who deleted his Twitter account when the internet turned against him, and Game of Thrones itself.
In hindsight, this cameo was the moment that Game of Thrones started to fall apart. The show suffered an infamous decline in quality in its eighth and final season. But Sheeran's appearance in the first episode of season seven was an early sign that all was not well in Westeros. Sheeran can be an affable pop star: that's what he looks like in the new Disney series. doc. However, as a guest star in a popular fantasy franchise, he is the epitome of rock with fiery hair.
The prominence of a cameo is inversely proportional to its length, with Sheeran being onscreen for just over four minutes. Naturally, we hear it before we see it. Arya Stark, the tomboy princess turned assassin played by Maisie Williams, is driving through the woods when she hears an angelic voice from the distant bushes.
“He rode the streets of the city/Came down his hill high,” sings Sheeran, who thankfully left his signature loop pedal at home. «O' along the wind, and along the steps, and along the cobblestone/I rode on a woman's breath.
Arya grimaces as if to show her distaste for Ed's new musical direction. And here he is squatting by the fire in a red cloak and armor, leading his fellow warriors in a singsong voice. “It’s a beautiful song,” Arya lies. «It's new,» says Ed, suspiciously well-cleaned for a boar that lives off the land for weeks.
Ed Sheeran posted a photo of himself from Game of Thrones on his Instagram account. Photo: Instragram/Ed Sheeran
Arya sits with the soldiers and they share their rabbit with her. One asks: «What does a nice girl do on the way to King's Landing?» Taking a sip from her flask, she explains, «I'm going to kill the Queen.» The soldiers laugh, not realizing that Arya is completely serious in her mission to destroy her nemesis Cersei (to whom all Lannister troops have sworn allegiance).
A song is never just a song in Game of Thrones — remember how The Rains of Castamere predicted the Stark massacre at the Red Wedding. In this case, Sheeran is singing Hands Of Gold, which was not written by him but by Oregon songwriter Peter Hollens (who collaborated with Beach Boy Brian Wilson on his No Pier Pressure LP).
This is the last of the Hands Of Gold on the show. In the novels of George R. R. Martin, he has quite a deep territory. Here it is written by the bard Simon Silvertongue and tells of Tyrion Lannister and his secret lover Shae. In other words, it's music as blackmail — although Simon's plan to extort Tyrion backfires when Tyrion silences him by killing him.
George R. R. Martin loves a good prophecy. And that's what Golden Hands is ultimately about: Tyrion recites the line «Gold Hands are always cold, but women's hands are warm» after Shai betrays him and he strangles her with a chain around her neck. None of them scream «classic Ed Sheeran.»
Within the four walls of Game of Thrones, the stage works perfectly. He humanizes the Lannister soldiers, showing that these agents of the evil Queen Cersei are just boys away from home. And it all culminates in Sheeran's pleasant singing. Well done to all involved.
Or not. The morning after the episode aired on July 16, the backlash was already in full swing. «Does anyone think Ed Sheeran just ruined realism?» wrote one fan on Reddit. “Looks like product placement,” said another.
Ed Sheeran blew up Twitter with his cameo appearance on Game of Thrones. He seemed to immediately realize that his line at Thrones had gone down the same way as the White Walkers at the nunnery. “It was great,” he would say later. «I think people's reaction to this has dampened my joy a bit.»
Among those who reacted negatively were the cast of Game of Thrones. «I'm not a big fan of Game of Thrones cameos,» Christian Nairn, aka Gentle Giant Hodor, told the Huffington Post.
«I do not like them. I think it's stupid. I don't mind stating this. I just think it takes you right out of the world.”
Sheeran could point out that he was far from the first musician to grace Game of Thrones. Sigur Rós, Coldplay drummer Will Champion and Snow Patrol rushed out from under the parapets. In addition, the producers asked the indie band The Hold Steady to continue the work, but they refused.
These artists were brought in because the showrunners were fans. In addition, they were relatively obscure. If you weren't a Sigur Rós fan, would you have noticed that they were on hand to witness the poisoning of the hideous Joffrey?
Sheeran was different. His playing was excellent, as was his singing. He was also one of the most famous pop stars in the world. His presence destroyed the sense of immersion required for a fantasy story like Game of Thrones.
This pointed to the shortsightedness of the showrunners. This is where the first cascade of missteps occurred, culminating by next season with Arya appearing out of nowhere to kill the Night King, and feuding lovers Cersei and Jamie Lannister putting logic aside to reconcile. Sheeran was where the rot began.
Far from cynical product placement, Sheeran's motives for appearing on screen were quite salutary. He agreed to take part in the show as a favor to producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. They knew that Maisie Williams was a big fan of Sheeran. It was planned at the time to write her off the series (they later changed their minds). Since her departure seemed imminent, they wanted to treat her — by inviting her favorite singer to the set.
«This was supposed to be her last season, but it wasn't,» Sheeran said. “And as a surprise for her [they got] me. So she was supposed to show up on set and I was by the fire.”
Also, Sheeran might wonder why he got so much heat from his «blink and end» scene. His girlfriend Taylor Swift has had several cameos in far more catastrophic productions, including Andrew Lloyd Webber's PTSD-inducing adaptation of Cats and David O'Russell's Amsterdam, in which her character is thrown under a car in an unintentionally a hilarious scene that deserves a place in the shameful meme hall of fame. But there was no response for her.
The difference, of course, is that no one invested in a Cats movie or a David O'Russell period picture. Whereas Game of Thrones was the world's favorite series. And then parachuting Ed Sheeran with what sounded like a hey-nonnie-nonnie version of the A-Team.
«Okay, I'm sorry Ed Sheeran annoyed you!» co-producer Bryan Cogman said in an interview with Vanity Fair shortly after the broadcast. But have you watched everything else? Did you like it? Because you spend a lot of time complaining about Ed Sheeran!”
As we have seen, Sheeran went through this period of trial, refusing to acknowledge that it ever happened. However, for the «Game of Thrones» everything was ready. The cameo is no accident, it was proof that the franchise is in irreversible decline.
Forget about «jumping the shark», a concept that originates in an episode of «Happy Days» in which Fonz jet skis over a marine predator, thereby signaling that the popular sitcom flopped. While Ed sang around the campfire, Game of Thrones «jumped over Sheeran» — and never recovered.
What about the character Sheehan, whose name was later confirmed to be «Eddie»? Everything was revealed in the season eight premiere, where a group of sex workers in a brothel discuss his fate. “I came back with a burnt face,” they say. He has no eyelids now. Poor Eddie. And poor Ed, whose boyish charm was shattered when he was fed to the insatiable maw of Game of Thrones fans.
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