For the Netflix concert film One Shot with Ed Sheeran: A Musical Experience, the English singer-songwriter takes his nice guy persona for a musical stroll through New York City, with assistance fromAdolescencedirector Phil Barantini. In that show, like in this film, a continuous shot without edits is featured, and One Shot finds Sheeran moving from the soundcheck at his own concert, through a series of sunny New York City streets, and onward to assorted “surprises,” always with a guitar in hand. “Whenever I play these cities, I never really get out, so I sort of wanted to go about the town for a little bit.” OK Ed, we’ll go along with this bit of contrived spontaneity. And we’ll ignore your microphone pack, camera crew, and hovering guitar tech.
The Gist: The way One Shot with Ed Sheeran is set up, we’re supposed to not notice the setup. We’re asked to only be like the passerby Ed encounters on the street in Midtown Manhattan, as he takes a stroll between the soundcheck and his show. Hey, quick selfie, they say. Hey back, Ed says; he does the selfie. “Brilliant mate, thanks.” And next thing you know he’s serenading a cab driver with “The A-Team,” on his way to the High Line, where he’ll sing “Perfect” while walking, dip his guitar neck in deference to passing runners, and emerge alongside a young couple. Steven, Ed tells us, got in touch about his engagement to Tal, and Sheeran’s “Gonna go surprise them.”
The camera that follows all of this really does move with insistent continuity. It glides easily into and out of that cab with Sheeran; it effortlessly parts the crowd that gathers, once the singer’s band appears with acoustic instruments for a streetside version of “Shiver.” By the time Ed’s banging out a few numbers on the top tier of a tour bus, and he’s directing folks in how to sing along, you’re supposed to be fully immersed, like how we don’t comment on the cameras that are an extension of a typical reality show performer’s physical space. One Shot is making an episode of “Ed TV,” and every New Yorker is in the studio audience.
When Ed Sheeran isn’t singing “Bad Habits” on a rooftop with twentysomething birthday revelers, he’s joining the Irish folk band Beoga for a midday set at Landmark Tavern in Hell’s Kitchen. Just a quick sip of a pint! And as the camera follows him out the door, the surprises continue in a line. Like Camila Cabello, who was for some reason chilling in a no parking zone behind the pub in her two-door Mercedes G-Wagon. Sure Ed Sheeran, Camila will drive you to the 50th Street subway entrance. You two might as well collab on a version of “Photograph,” it’ll help us not notice no one’s actually driving.
Photo: Netflix
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? In 2023 Ed Sheeran put out The Sum Of It All, a pretty solid, more conventionally-shot documentary about his life and career. And while the gimmick that drives One Shot makes it pretty one-of-a-kind as concert films go, we enjoyed thinking about its concept as open-ended. Like, what if Sheeran was always in a continuous shot? His spontaneous concert film could have picked up inside the recent episode of Limitlesswith Chris Hemsworth he appeared in.
Performance Worth Watching: Anyone caught in the background of Sheeran’s New York City stroll looks and acts exactly like anyone in the background of any Marvel movie ever. Look at me, I’m a real person going about my day, without any distinguishing characteristics or visible trademarks! My features and movements resemble “reality” only in the way AI does!
As for Sheeran himself, he has some fun fucking with the continuous shot concept. Singing to passengers on an open-air bus, he stops the tape when passing sirens blare. “OK, it’s just dawned on me we’re making a one-shot music concert with no edits.” (Sirens continue.) “No one said I couldn’t use the fast-forward button…”
Sex and Skin: While the subject matter of an Ed Sheeran song can sometimes drift into mild NSFW territory, it’s not like this dude has ever had a Parental Advisory sticker slapped on his ass, which makes it kind of funny that Ed’s own Netflix concert film bleeps out his very basic swears.
Photo: Disney+
Our Take: In One Shot, the camera becomes Ed Sheeran’s mischievous co-conspirator. When he’s out there walking around, with just his voice and guitar, it might as well be his only other band member. That’s a cool thing this concert film does. It draws out the charisma Sheeran would have during a traditional stage performance, pulls and forms it into a kind of elastic string, then stretches that thing right across Manhattan. Ed Sheeran becomes your clickable last mile taxi, only he’s delivering rizz and pleasant non-threatening hookup jams instead of hard seltzer and burritos.
Is a continuous shot concert film as unnecessary as a robot making food deliveries? Yes. But that doesn’t mean Sheeran can’t lean into it. A big component of his celebrity is his general niceness, and as the singer ambles around midtown, it’s all as amiable as his style of performance typically is. What mild pressure One Shot exerts on the viewer is through its technical maneuvering, but neither Sheeran nor his crew seem to care about “proving it.” It’s just a mechanism to move the singer’s nice guy energy into multiple spaces, and sure, maybe sell a few records along the way. Even if there were subtle cuts and edits to make this project work – and we’re not even saying there are – Sheeran himself conveys its authenticity. It’s no stretch at all to believe he really would join a group of subway station buskers on a version of “Sapphire.”
Our Call: Stream It. One Shot with Ed Sheeran is exactly like that dream you always have, the one where you’re walking down a city street, you run into a world-famous singer-songwriter, and he sings “I Don’t Care” while you fill in the Justin Bieber parts, and neither of you mention the camera.
Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.
