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Fact #151899

When:

Short story:

When Ed Sheeran plays a fundraising gig for The Crisis Homeless Shelter at Proud Galleries, Camden, London, England, UK, Europe, he meets 'Angel', a young woman whose story of drug addiction and prostitution inspires him to write his first hit single, The A Team.

Full article:

Ed Sheeran : I have a friend who works at a homeless shelter every Christmas. He asked me to go along one year and play some songs for the people there.

I met a girl called Angel, who was this amazing girl who really stood out – mainly because she was the only girl in the shelter and everyone else was male. I learned a lot about Angel, the unfortunate ways she earned her money on the street, and the things she did with it when she had it – it was a very bleak story.

I spent some time with her playing her favourite songs, and then wrote The A Team for her.
(Source : East Anglian Daily Times, Oct 2011)

Ed Sheeran : The A Team' came from an experience I had when I did a gig at a homeless shelter. I was 18 at the time and kind of quite naïve. So I was a bit taken aback by some of the stories that I heard. I got home that night and I just wrote a lot of the lyrics. I wanted to write it so it sounded kind of upbeat, so you wouldn't really know what it's about, because it's quite a dark subject.

A drug like crack cocaine is called a 'Class A drug'. That's in the same category as heroin. Instead of making it clear and just saying what the problem was, I'd say, 'She's in the 'Class A' team.' It was kind of my way of covering up (a person's addiction), I guess, making it a bit more subtle.
(Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_A_Team_(Ed_Sheeran_song))