Ed Sheeran Quotes

It was my love for the guitar that first got me into music and singing. Growing up, I was inspired by The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Damian Rice was a huge influence for me musically.

It's like there's the rest of the world, and then there's America. Part of the reason I would really love continue to making music over here because so much of American music has inspired me, whether it's Jeff Buckley, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen.

What I'm doing is basically the same as Bob Dylan did with folk songs and Woody Guthrie songs, the same as folk music's always done. I'm not going to sing about ploughing, but I'll write a song that sounds like it should be about ploughing.

Everything I hear influences me. I can't tell you all my influences as a musician.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs.

As a songwriter, oddly enough, my influences were people like Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and Buddy Holly. Some psychedelic stuff, too.

My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.

Right now, musically I'm inspired by everyday people.

Everything that I do on stage comes from seeing the Black Crowes in '95 in Charlotte. For 'Let Her Cry,' I was just trying to write 'She Talks to Angels.'

I probably get most of my inspiration through music.

I'm just inspired by music.

Most people think that I heard Bob Dylan first and got a cap and harmonica. Really, it was Woody Guthrie. He was so influential.

I take inspiration from so many places. I think, more than anything, it would have to be the music made by others that I've then fallen in love with, whether it's Madonna, Blood Orange, Fleetwood Mac, or Pink Floyd!

I think The Beatles are the lasting influence on me, even more so than Dylan.

It probably all started with The Beatles, and then I guess it goes out from there. Springsteen... Fleetwood Mac... I mean, that's all so inherent in us that when we're making records now, we take a lot from the artists who are around us.

One of my big inspirations was Chuck Berry, and his playing was always about the rhythm and the lyrics. So I've always been that way in my playing, really.

I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.

A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.

My songwriting and my style became more complex as I listened, learned, borrowed and stole and put my music together.

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.

That's always been a dream for me, to be able to collaborate and make music with the people that inspired you to make music.

It's the coolest part about writing music. I don't know how other people work, but so much is derived from some amalgamation of all these different songs that I love. That's why they jump all over the place.

The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin.

I try to write like the writers I admire - I rip them off in form. It comes from George Strait and Merle Haggard records, and country music in general is really good at that, the twisted phrase... So I'm always looking for that angle in my own work.