Alex Casey reviews Ed Sheeran’s very rainy show at Christchurch’s Apollo Projects Stadium.
When Ed Sheeran sauntered through the poncho-laden crowd at Christchurch’s Apollo Projects Stadium last night, he appeared completely indistinguishable from the Venues Ōtautahi staffer that had sold us a Creamy Milk slab just a few moments prior. Wearing black jeans, black sneakers and a black rain jacket, Sheeran possesses such a powerful everyman quality that, when he picked up the guitar, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t watching a soundie have a crack before the big gig. “Wow, he’s just like us,” my plus one said. “He’s in the rain too.”
This is Sheeran’s secret sauce – he will stand in the rain, fly economy and eat hot chips in Featherston, while also being one of the most ubiquitous singer-songwriters of our time. Walk into any shop and you will hear Ed Sheeran. Turn on the radio and you will hear Ed Sheeran. Open Netflix and you’ll see Ed Sheeran. You might think you don’t know any Ed Sheeran songs, but relax your mind, close your eyes, and soon it will drift into your subconscious like an ancient Gregorian chant: “the club isn’t the best place to find a lover, so the bar is where I go.”
Sheeran is so beloved across so many demographics that, upon acquiring a last minute ticket to his sold out Loop tour, I found out that my mum, who I thought had not ingested any new music since Shania Twain’s 1997 album Come on Over, wanted me to record ‘Perfect’ for her. My 75 year-old father somehow had an extensive understanding of the Loop tour stage set-up. My friend’s 12-year-old daughter wanted to go because she thought he might bring out Taylor Swift. Sheeran has all people of all stripes trapped in his Lego House, and I wanted in.
Even though, as Sheeran said himself, it was “chucking down” with rain, Christchurch punters of all ages still showed up in their Bunnings ponchos and umbrella hats, light-up glasses and Hunter gumboots. 2026 is the year of friction-maxxing after all – embracing inconveniences in everyday life to build resilience – and all 18,000 of us were officially committed to a huge night of Sheeran-maxxing. “Thank you so much for waiting in the rain up until now,” Sheeran joked. “It’s nice to know that New Zealand summer is the same as British summer. I feel at home”
Speaking of maxxing: the bloody stage. The largest screen build in New Zealand, Sheeran’s Loop Tour stage has multiple iterations in different tour spots as it takes several days and about 300 people to put up and pack down. Periodically, a long retractable bridge would stretch out like ET’s finger to a smaller stage in the middle of the crowd. Sheeran was largely a lone figure traversing this enormous set-up back and forth for most of the three-hour show, sometimes seeming dwarfed by it. “This stage is super wet and super slippy,” he said at one point. “If do fall, be kind to me on TikTok.”
Aided by a complicated loop pedal situation that saw him build the layers of every song live without any backing tracks, Sheeran tore through big hits like ‘Sapphire’, ‘Castle on the Hill’ and ‘A Team’, the latter of which he talked about playing to endless empty pubs in London at the age of 18. When he first played it in New Zealand in 2012, he thought it was a one hit wonder and he would never come back. He shook off his dripping wet hair on the 10-storey tall screen. “I feel like I’m Chris Martin from Coldplay in the ‘Yellow’ video when he’s soaking wet.”
As the rain continued to pour (“it’s coming in sideways now” the man next to me noted, hiding behind a plastic bag), there were some thrilling technical difficulties. After Sheeran dovetailed ‘Don’t’’ into a surprising mash-up with Blackstreet’s ‘No Diggity’, the retractable bridge failed to retract. During the section where he played audience requests including deep cuts like ‘Friends’ and ‘Drunk’, the first of several of his guitars puttered out completely. “I don’t think guitars are supposed to be soaked in the rain like this,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen a puddle in my set list.”
Although the tour is billed around Sheeran’s loop pedal skills, a highlight was when he brought out Irish folk band Beoga for ‘Galway Girl’ and ‘Nancy Mulligan’, the visuals onscreen showing Sheeran’s disembodied head drifting over fields of Irish wildflowers and Claddagh rings. The buzzy Sheeran scenes didn’t stop there. For ‘Celestial’ he zoomed past Jupiter through the solar system. For ‘I See Fire’ he appeared inside the eye of Sauron, as the elaborate pyrotechnics set-up belched out welcome flames around the arena (instinctively, many in the audiences lifted their hands to warm themselves up).
By the end of the show, Sheeran had only two guitars left that hadn’t gone “kaput” in the rain, his earpiece was waterlogged and he had to stop to put a hoodie on under his jacket, putting both hoods up for the remainder of the show like a Sith Lord. In case there was any doubt of his work ethic, he squeezed in a medley of hit songs he had written for other people, including ‘Love Yourself’ for Justin Bieber and ‘2002’ for Anne-Marie. He finished up with ‘Shape of You’ and ‘Bad Habits’, which the entire crowd jumped up and down for, not least to stay warm. New Zealand summer, eh?
