Ed Sheeran surprised a fan who covers his songs on YouTube by inviting him on stage to perform ‘The A Team’ in London last week – check out the footage below.

The singer-songwriter was performing at The O2 last Friday (March 24) as part of his current UK/Ireland and European arena tour when he spotted Luke Gittins, 22, in the audience.

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“Do you know ‘The A Team’?” Sheeran asked. “Do you want to come up and sing ‘The A Team? This isn’t set up, so thank you very much for doing this last-minute. We’ve got a guitar set up for you.”

As Gittins made his way up to the stage, the ‘=’ star explained: “The reason I wanted to do this, guys, is like… being an up-and-coming singer-songwriter is really, really, really tough.

“And when I wrote ‘The A Team’ I was in a room and I was writing songs, and I was trying to make people care about the songs I wrote. I was covering other people’s songs to try and make people care about the songs that I wrote.”

Sheeran went on to say that he’d listened to Gittins’ original tracks, and hailed them as “brilliant”. He then gave a shout-out to the musician’s YouTube channel before the pair performed together in front of 20,000 fans.

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Later, Sheeran shared some official footage of the moment as well as a clip of Gittins playing ‘Eyes Closed’ in the queue at The O2 (see the post above).

“Every time I release a song @lukegittinsmusic is always the first to cover it,” he wrote in the caption. “I saw him front row at the O2 yesterday and decided to bring him up, this was totally unplanned and he was so prepared and so amazing without any heads up whatsoever.

“Thanks so much Luke you’re wonderful. I used to do what Luke did and cover other people’s songs so people would check out my original material – that’s all singer-songwriters want, to have their original songs heard by any means necessary.”

Sheeran added: “So please go and check out Luke’s original music, he’s fantastic. And also check out his awesome version of ‘Eyes Closed’ while you’re at it x.”

On YouTube, Gittins said: “Still absolutely speechless that this happened. What an incredible night! I had no idea he was going to ask, and you can see the exact moment I looked up and realised 20,000 people were watching.”

Sheeran released ‘The A Team’ as his debut single back in 2011. ‘Eyes Closed’ came out last week as the first preview of the musician’s fifth album ‘-‘ (‘Subtract’), which is due to arrive on May 5 via Asylum/Atlantic (pre-order here).

Per a press release, ‘-‘ is an acoustic-driven record that serves as the “last in [Sheeran’s] decade-spanning mathematical album era”. The project features writing and production from Aaron Dessner of The National.

Sheeran and Dessner are set to play ‘-‘ in its entirety at a special theatre show in Brooklyn, New York next month.

Recently, Sheeran opened up about how he felt like he “didn’t want to live anymore,” following the death of his friend Jamal Edwards last year.

Sheeran has also revealed plans for a posthumous album. “I want to slowly make this album that is quote-unquote ‘perfect’ for the rest of my life, adding songs here and there,” he explained. “And just have it in my will that after I die, it comes out.”

The post Watch Ed Sheeran surprise fan who posts YouTube covers by inviting him on stage appeared first on NME.