You're no doubt already obsessed with every single heart-melting Ed Sheeran track. But in case you haven't been introduced to Ed's first record-label signee, Jamie Lawson, it's time to meet your newest music obsession. The Irish singer-songwriter recently released his self-titled debut album, and his first soulful single, "Wasn't Expecting That," will likely make its way to the Most Played section of your iTunes pretty damn fast.
In celebration of Jamie's new album, both guys stopped by BuzzFeed New York to play a little round of "Never Have I Ever," in which they talk drunk brunch, Netflix and chill, and their go-to moves when forgetting lyrics on stage. Here's what we learned.
Never have I ever jumped out of a plane or gone skydiving.
Ed Sheeran: No, I’m terrified of heights.
Jamie Lawson: I’d do it. For sure. But I’ve never done it. I think it’d be quite freeing.
ES: I jumped off a yacht the other day and burst my eardrum.
JL: Maybe you shouldn’t do that then.
ES: Now I have to have an operation. I can’t fly for a month after having the operation, so I can’t do it until next year. So I just can’t swim now.
Never have I ever been mistaken for a doppelgänger.
ES: All the time. I just always get people coming up to me at parties thinking I’m, like, Rupert Grint. Who else? Someone thought I was Boris Johnson once. He’s the mayor of London. He’s about 60.
JL: You don’t look like him either — there’s no way.
ES: It was really insulting.
What was your reaction?
ES: You know what, I get mistaken for people a lot, but I know there’s a lot of people who get mistaken for me. I keep getting fans tagging me with like the fat ginger dude they met at the pub and they’re just like, “Met Ed Sheeran today!” So I know people get mistaken for me. I see them all the time. I don’t know whether they’re joking or not, but I have a feeling they’re not. Actually, I know for a fact that there’s a dude that gets laid because he says he’s me. I’ll be in Estonia or something, and my manager — I remember the last email he got was like, “I think I had sex with Ed at a festival last night in my tent but I’m not sure. If I did, tell him he’s a wanker. If I didn’t, I’m sorry for the email.” And we’re like, well, we’re in Estonia, so someone’s having a lot of fun.
Never have I ever talked my way out of a speeding ticket.
JL: You don’t drive, right?
ES: I don’t drive. I failed my driving test. I haven’t really talked my way out of anything. There’s not really many police where I live. I have a friend who still hasn’t gotten a license and he’s 42, and he drives every day. It’s in the middle of nowhere — there’s no police.
Never have I ever had a drink thrown in my face.
ES: I don’t think I have.
JL: No.
ES: I think I’ve thrown a drink in my own face before, like dancing on a table and falling over. That’s definitely happened. But no, I don’t think I’ve ever had a drink thrown in my face. I can’t imagine Jamie being rude to someone either, to have a drink thrown in your face.
JL: Maybe if I was very drunk. But I’d have to be verrry drunk.
ES: Right, but you being rude is like not putting a coaster down or something like that.
JL: That’s worthy of having a drink in your face!
ES: You know how you wake up in the morning after a night out and you have the fear, "Oh, what’d I say to that person?!” Jamie would wake up and be like, “Oh no, I put my fucking drink down and didn’t put a coaster!” That would be your fear.
JL: Yeah, it’s very similar. [laughs]
Never have I ever used a selfie stick.
ES: Yeah, I use them with fans quite a lot. I find the selfie stick an amazing thing because the dude has become a multimillionaire just off making a stick. Genius.
Never have I ever told someone I cooked food when I really ordered takeout.
ES: No, I haven’t.
JL: I quite enjoy cooking.
ES: Yeah, I’m terrible at cooking, so, like, if they got takeout they’d know.
Never have I ever been to a drunk brunch.
ES: They have a really good one in New York. It’s like $50 if you want mimosas.
You’re going to the wrong one! It’s usually like $30.
JL: I live in the wrong city then.
ES: Yeah, we have it in England, but we don’t really have all-you-can-drink in England.
Never have I ever snuck into a "no trespassing" area.
JL: I expect so. I grew up quite near train tracks; I used to go on the train tracks all the time. Don’t do that, kids!
ES: Yeah, a lot of places where we grew up are really easy to break into. I wasn’t there, but my mates once broke into the private school and stole every single fire extinguisher, which I think is probably the worst thing you can do as a human being. I didn’t do it, though!
Never have I ever befriended a fan.
ES: Yeah, of course. I have a fan called Jen, and every time I see her she's made me a gift, but she’ll spend like, a year making it. So the first time she knit me a doll, the next time it was a knitted hat or a blanket, and the last time I saw her she made me my own Monopoly. Everything was personalized, even down to the figures. Around the board the things you buy were like the venues I came up playing or the first album. You'd start off at like a really small venue and finish at Wembley Stadium. Wembley Stadium would be like, Park Ave.
JL: It was amazing. It was really beautiful.
ES: Yeah, it was really cool. I have a lot of fans like that. I have no idea what I get up to, I'll do things and forget I've done it, but I have fanbase sites that are really just on it and update stuff so I check them kind of daily to just be like, Oh yeah, I did that, cool!
Never have I ever canceled on a date last-minute because I wanted to stay in and relax.
ES: Depends what kind of date.
JL: Like, with a love interest, so to speak?
ES: Yeah, I think that’s probably true. Staying in by yourself to have a Netflix and chill. A legitimate Netflix and chilling. Except I don't have Netflix so it’d be iTunes and chill.
Never have I ever stalked a crush on Instagram and accidentally double-tapped their picture.
JL: I don’t think I have done that. I think I've followed people on Twitter by accident. People are saying, "Thanks for the follow" and I'm like, Oh shit, I definitely didn't follow you.
ES: I’ve done that. For a month I was, like, following Coldplay Updates. I was like, what?
ES: I didn't know on Instagram a double-tap was a thing. Because on an iPhone when you double-tap, it zooms. There’s a really bad one I did. I had to leave it, I had to make it look like it was normal. It wasn't a crush, though, I can't remember what it was. It was really bad, though.
Never have I ever forgotten the lyrics to a song while onstage.
JL: Allll the time. I do it all the time. And the thing is, at the stage I'm at, not everyone knows my songs, so it’s all right, I can kind of get away with it. But I tell them anyway. But yeah, I do it all the time — it’s my biggest fear as well.
Do you have a move? Like, [points mic to the crowd] “Sing it!”
ES: That’s my move. Or my other move to do is, like, just pretend like you're really, really into it and you just do this...
...take time and then come back into it. Just like you're so into the song you're like, Hold on a minute! I'm gonna take a break from singing to realize how into [the song] I am. But really you're going, Holy shit, what are the words, what are the words?
Never have I ever practiced a pickup line in the mirror.
ES: I don't think I have.
JL: I'm not a pickup-line person.
ES: I’m not. I'm really bad at chatting up women. I'm really bad. I went through a phase of not realizing that I was chatting up a girl and then like a year later them being like, "Why'd you never call?" And I'm like, I thought we were just having a conversation?!
Never have I ever googled myself.
JL: I do it to find out where I'm gonna be playing. I don't always know, so I do that. I try not to read any comments or anything about myself.
ES: I'm the opposite. I read everything and also all the comments. I actually search it out. I've got a shit list, so I search it out and read all the bad stuff and then I've written down all the people so whenever the label come and go, “Hey, you got this writer today!” and I'm, like, Nah. Not that my time is precious, but I like doing things with my promotional time that I'll enjoy, and if I'm speaking with someone who doesn't like me, there’s no point.
Never have I ever streaked or gone skinny-dipping.
JL: Oh yeah, skinny-dipping’s ace. I love skinny-dipping. Night swimming as well, that's my favorite.
ES: Yeah, I grew up in the country, so all we did was streak. My friends take it a step further. Because I started touring at a young age, I didn't go to all the parties. My male mates kind of do that at every opportunity. They had like a cheese-and-wine night, I came back and saw these pictures on Facebook of all of them just completely naked sitting down eating cheese, I'm like, What prompted that? I have some interesting friends.
Never have I ever given someone a fake phone number.
JL: I don't think so.
ES: I always do it where I’ll give, like, one digit less. People, like, watch your fingers so you'll just put it in fast and be like, text me! I don't do it a lot now because what I find people do is, "Oh, let me drop call you right now!" That’s the awkward thing. But I'm really bad with my phone. You'll get, like, a bunch of texts and be like, I'm gonna sit down one day and reply to it. And you’ll go through like 70 texts and reply to all of them and be like, Whew. And then everyone will reply and you're like, Ahhh! So I've ended up just like leaving it.
JL: I've given fake emails. You know when hotels and stuff ask for your email?
ES: I give them my manager’s. He’s probably got so much spam. I did this one thing, actually, to my manager’s email. When we were shooting the “Drunk” music video — it’s me interacting with a cat — I was just really bored one day in Finland and I just kinda looked at Stuart and was like, I'm gonna ruin your day [laughs] and tweeted to like 2 million people, “Right, we need to cast a girl in this music video with me and a cat, if you're interested please send a picture of you and a cat to Stuart’s email address." And it crashed his phone. Actually, the other one I did to Stuart — I'm quite cruel to Stuart — you know on an iPhone where you type in the code and it locks and you have to wait five minutes, and then again and you have to wait 15 minutes? I thought a BlackBerry was the same, but if you type a fake password into a BlackBerry 10 times, it wipes it. Like, all your contacts, all your emails. I did that to him on a bank holiday weekend so he couldn't get it fixed for four days. And then I started asking him, So what are we doing next week? And he’s like, I don’t know!
Never have I ever played strip poker.
ES: How was that? You win?
JL: I think I might've.
ES: Did you do the thing where you wore a trench coat and 17 socks? Because when we played, me and all my mates were on holiday and I was just in shorts and a hat. So I could only take off three things.
JL: That suggests that you quite like getting naked, I think.
ES: No, I was just really hot. And I like getting naked.
Watch Jamie Lawson perform his new single during our #BuzzFeedMusicBreak below:
Check out some of the interview in the clip below: