Musician sparks online trend with Ed Sheeran cover

An amateur musician managed to record a cover of Ed Sheeran's latest song, 'Azizam,' before the singer even released it, by playing detective.

Luke Gittins, 24, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, scoured promotional clips of the song to work out its likely structure and taught himself how to use a loop pedal to record it.

Azizam was officially released on Friday, but Sheeran had already endorsed Mr Gittins' cover on his Instagram page ahead of the song being released. He has now sparked an online trend, with other people trying to cover songs they have not heard in full.

Mr Gittins said: "There's no higher privilege than having your work shared by the person who actually did the work and made the song."

He said there were lots of teasers of the song "so I turned detective and pieced them all together".

"I got incredibly close, I think, to what the actual live version will sound like."

Mr Gittins, a guitar teacher, said: "It's quite quick for me to figure things out - not because I'm a genius, just because I've done it lots before."

He said the hardest part of the process had been learning to use the loop pedal, which allows a musician to record and then immediately play back a musical phrase.

It means they can create multi-layered sounds in real time with just one instrument.

Mr Gittens said Sheeran's ability to use a loop pedal live during two-hour long sets was "genuinely baffling".

It is not the first time Mr Gittins' work has caught Sheeran's attention.

In March 2023 he performed a duet of The A Team with him after being picked out of the crowd at a gig at the O2.

Mr Gittins performed a cover of Sheeran's song Eyes Closed while in the queue for the concert and other fans posted the video online.

The star saw the video before the performance, and then spotted him again in the front row of the audience.

"He was so prepared and so amazing without any heads up whatsoever," Sheeran wrote on Facebook.

But Mr Gittins said he had not covered Azizam in the hope Sheeran might see it.

"I thought this song is really good, it's coming out on Friday, people are going to love it and if I've got the ability to do a good cover early, why stop myself?"

He continued: "I've noticed a lot of people online are now trying to do the same thing, which is cool.

"It might be really cool to do this with less of the teasers and make it more of a song writing task."

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