Ed Sheeran is set to overtake Adele as Britain’s most successful singer, but with their similarly eye-watering salaries and multi-million pound mansions, who will be crowned king (or queen) of the crooners?
Ed Sheeran may be an unassuming 27-year-old with a decidedly down-to-earth demeanour, scruffy hair and dubious taste in T-shirts, but he is also eye-wateringly wealthy.
Recently published accounts reveal that he earned £181,000 a day last year, making him the highest-earning young man in the music industry.
Yet there is one young British musician who is better off still: ballad-blasting songstress Adele, who has dominated the charts since her debut album was released more than a decade ago and is today worth a staggering £140 million.
But while Sheeran spent 2018 touring after releasing his third album, Adele, 30, hasn’t released a record for more than three years and is reported to have closed down her touring company altogether.
Were Ed to continue to boost his bank balance at such a rate, he could soon outearn the woman he has professed to feeling in fierce competition with.
So, how does the king of the crooners’ lifestyle compare with the queen’s? From wild parties with celebrity friends, to their exes and millionaire mansions, we brush up on the battle to become Britain’s most successful singer . . .
RIDICULOUSLY RICH — AND STILL MAKING MILLIONS
In the age of music app Spotify and stagnating record sales, both Adele and Ed earn more than most other pop stars combined. In 2018, Sheeran, whose debut album topped the charts in 2011, earned £106,000 a day — that’s £38.7 million a year — through his world tour and a further £75,000 a day for his ‘writing, recording and production of music’. Exactly how wealthy that makes him right now is unclear.
Last May, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, Sheeran was worth £80 million, while Adele’s fortune was estimated at £140 million. Lagging behind them was former One Direction star Harry Styles, with a meagre £50 million.
Yet, with Adele’s attention focused on raising her son, Angelo, now six, Sheeran’s £125-a-minute pay cheque means he’s catching up fast. Between 2017 and 2018, his net worth increased by £28 million — almost double Adele’s £15 million. Come this year’s Rich List, those positions could easily be reversed . . .
ROCK STAR RATING:
ADELE: ★★★★★
ED: ★★★★★
Ed Sheeran spent 2018 touring after releasing his third album, Adele, 30, hasn’t released a record for more than three years and is reported to have closed down her touring company altogether. Last May, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, Sheeran was worth £80 million, while Adele’s fortune was estimated at £140 million. Lagging behind them was former One Direction star Harry Styles, with a meagre £50 million
ADELE’S SUCCESS RATTLES SHEERAN
Both have followed an uncannily similar career trajectory. Adele named her albums after her age when they were produced — 19, 21 and 25 — and Sheeran, who admits to checking his record sales first thing every morning, appears to have followed suit.
His three albums have been + (Plus) in 2011, x (Multiply) in 2014 and ÷ (Divide) in 2017.
Divide became the fastest-selling UK album by a solo male artist and added to Sheeran’s tally of five UK No 1 singles, compared with Adele’s two.
Yet 21 is still the biggest album of the Millennium, having shifted a staggering 35 million copies to date, while 25 is the fastest-selling album of all time, so far shifting more than 22 million copies — dwarfing Ed’s overall album sales of 38 million.
Adele’s success seems to pique Sheeran, who in 2017 admitted that Adele is ‘the one person who’s sold more records than me in the past ten years. She’s the only person I need to sell more records than. That’s a big feat because her last album sold 20 million. But if I don’t set her as the benchmark, then I’m selling myself short’. Sheeran has won 97 music awards compared with Adele’s 136, which includes an Oscar for Bond theme song Skyfall. Both have received MBEs for ‘services to music’.
ADELE: ★★★★★
ED: ★★★★✩
Both have followed an uncannily similar career trajectory. Adele named her albums after her age when they were produced — 19, 21 and 25 — and Sheeran, who admits to checking his record sales first thing every morning, appears to have followed suit
ONE HOME IS NEVER ENOUGH
Raised in a South London flat by her single mum, Adele bought a house in West London for £5.6m in 2012, then the place next door for £5.4 m, making a super-sized home.
Not to be usurped, Sheeran, who grew up in Suffolk, has bought four adjoining properties for around £3 m to create a mini-estate on the outskirts of a Suffolk village, replete with giant treehouse, swimming pool and his own pub.
Sheeran is also reportedly building a ‘man cave’ on site, comprising a cinema and underground music room connected to the main house by a tunnel.
Of course, both boast a property portfolio far beyond that. In 2017, Adele, whose primary residence is a £7m, 6,500 sq ft Los Angeles mansion, spent a reported £4m on an eight-bed Tudor country estate in East Grinstead, West Sussex, and was reportedly looking at a £30m seven-bedroom Chelsea apartment the same year.
She has reportedly bought a London flat for her mother and sold her luxury £2.8m beach-front home in Brighton for a £350,000 profit in 2016.
Sheeran bought an Italian villa and vineyard in 2017 and last April was reported to have spent £20m on an eight-bedroom home in London’s Notting Hill.
ADELE: ★★★★✩
ED: ★★★★★
For someone who has described himself as ‘not very attractive’, Sheeran has been linked to some of the world’s most beautiful women, from pop star Nicole Scherzinger (the relationship was denied) to singer Ellie Goulding. Goulding also denied the relationship in a rebuttal — later deleted — on Twitter
TWO RELUCTANT STYLE ICONS
Renowned for his casual clothes, Sheeran was named GQ magazine’s Worst Dressed Man in 2013.
Since then, he has stuck steadfastly to his uniform of hoodies, jeans and gingham shirts, his only concession to celebrity ‘glamour’ being the 60-odd tattoos on his chest and arms, which range from the Heinz Ketchup logo to a lion.
Bare-faced and clad in jogging bottoms off duty, Adele does red carpet glamour better in frocks by Valentino and Givenchy, £500 Louboutin heels, scarlet lipstick and black eyeliner.
Markedly thinner than at the start of her career, she attributes her weight loss to ‘f***ing boring’ gym sessions and cutting out the 20 sugars a day that she used to put in her tea. She refuses to dwell on her appearance more than necessary, saying she doesn’t have ‘time to worry about something as petty as what I look like’.
ADELE: ★★★✩✩
ED: ★✩✩✩✩
It clearly stung, as Sheeran responded with a curt ‘normal people don’t hold hands if they’re just friends’, especially amid reports she cheated on him with One Direction’s Niall Horan, allegedly prompting Sheeran’s single Don’t, in which he refers to a cheating ‘singer ex’
MYSTERY OF THE EXES
For someone who has described himself as ‘not very attractive’, Sheeran has been linked to some of the world’s most beautiful women, from pop star Nicole Scherzinger (the relationship was denied) to singer Ellie Goulding. Goulding also denied the relationship in a rebuttal — later deleted — on Twitter.
It clearly stung, as Sheeran responded with a curt ‘normal people don’t hold hands if they’re just friends’, especially amid reports she cheated on him with One Direction’s Niall Horan, allegedly prompting Sheeran’s single Don’t, in which he refers to a cheating ‘singer ex’.
Like Sheeran, Adele has pilfered her love life for material, with much of her second album, 21, about an unfaithful ex who she described in 2011 as ‘the love of my life’. Fashion photographer Alex Sturrock, who Adele dated in 2008, is rumoured to be the man in question, but Adele remains tight-lipped, other than to say they are ‘nobody famous’.
ADELE: ★★✩✩✩
ED: ★★★★✩
SECRET WEDDINGS TO UNSTARRY CIVILIANS
It wasn’t until 2015 that Ed fell in love ‘properly’ for the first time — with Cherry Seaborn, a friend and fellow pupil from his high school in Framlingham.
The couple got together after Sheeran brought financial consultant Seaborn, 26, to a party hosted by pop star Taylor Swift, with Sheeran proposing with a knuckle duster diamond ring in December 2017. ‘We’ve got cats, we have takeaways and watch movies, we have people round for dinner — I’ve never had that,’ says Sheeran of his cherished domesticity.
He was reported to have married Seaborn in secret last summer.
Meanwhile, Adele, who had previously called her dachshund Louie ‘the love of her life’, in 2016 suddenly appeared with a gold band on her finger and referred to her ‘husband’, Eton-educated Simon Konecki, 44, a former City worker who now runs a charity campaigning for clean water in poor countries. However, she didn’t divulge any details of their wedding. She attributes the 14-year age gap and Konecki’s civilian status to their successful relationship.
‘Simon is already who he is,’ she said, ‘and I’m still becoming who I’m going to be. He’s confident. He’s perfect.’
ADELE: ★★★✩✩
ED: ★★★✩✩
Adele, who had previously called her dachshund Louie ‘the love of her life’, in 2016 suddenly appeared with a gold band on her finger and referred to her ‘husband’, Eton-educated Simon Konecki, 44, a former City worker who now runs a charity campaigning for clean water in poor countries. However, she didn’t divulge any details of their wedding
HAPPY TO SWAP AMBITION FOR KIDS …
Both Adele and Ed have spoken of the potential that parenthood has to put paid to ambition, even if Adele is the only one yet to experience the debilitating exhaustion of toddler tantrums.
Adele has taken lengthy periods off since Angelo was born in 2012.
‘I never feel guilty when I’m not working,’ said Adele, who has told fans of plans to ‘disappear for a while’ to focus on motherhood.
Broody Sheeran has also spoken of his desire for babies and has bought a house near his Suffolk base for his parents, John and Imogen, so they’re on tap for babysitting duties. ‘My ambition is going to go to zero as soon as I have kids. I am going to be like, “I do not really care anymore as I have another life to take care of”.’
ADELE: ★✩✩✩✩
ED: ★✩✩✩✩
With a well-known propensity for boozing in the past (though he has now turned a corner with booze and other substances), Sheeran’s most notable alcohol-induced pickle occurred in 2016, when, after drinking in Windsor with his friend Princess Beatrice, he ended up with a knife gash on his cheek after a 4am mock ‘knighting’ ceremony
… AND TO GIVE UP THE PARTY LIFESTYLE
With a well-known propensity for boozing in the past (though he has now turned a corner with booze and other substances), Sheeran’s most notable alcohol-induced pickle occurred in 2016, when, after drinking in Windsor with his friend Princess Beatrice, he ended up with a knife gash on his cheek after a 4am mock ‘knighting’ ceremony.
‘It didn’t hurt and I’ve got a really cool story out of it,’ says Sheeran, who once admitted drinking alcohol ‘almost every single day’, has sung about taking ecstasy and been afflicted by an unidentified ‘substance abuse’ he says forced him to take a year off.
Also once what she described as a ‘massive drinker,’ Adele wrote 21 while ‘completely off her face’ and downing two bottles of wine a night. ‘I used to love to be drunk, but as I got more famous I would wake up the next morning and think, “What the f**k did I say and who the f**k did I say it to?”’
Having quit smoking and given up caffeine, Adele lives a markedly cleaner life now and limits herself to a couple of glasses of wine a week. However, she still loves a party, and for her 30th threw an epic Titantic-themed bash.
ADELE: ★★✩✩✩
ED: ★★★★✩
STAR-STUDDED FRIENDSHIP CIRCLES
Though both stars now share their lives with ‘civilians’, they also have half of Hollywood on speed dial. Sheeran has breakfasted with actor Russell Crowe, dined with Robert De Niro and is best mates with Taylor Swift. He’s close to Friends actress Courtney Cox, 54, whom he lodged with in LA in 2013 while song-writing.
‘There was no rent but I made the bed and cups of tea and things like that. If you’re staying at your friend’s house, you should treat it like your own.’
Then there is Harry Styles, with whom he shares a matching penguin tattoo in tribute to their shared love of children’s programme Pingu.
Adele’s famous acquaintances include Beyoncé, who has described Adele as ‘funny as hell’, as well as film stars Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone and Cameron Diaz. Sheeran and Adele appear to be friends with each other, too, with Sheeran saying the pair ‘went out for dinner’.
He also helped Konecki fundraise for his fresh water campaign last August by offering an all-expenses trip to his concert in New York.
ADELE: ★★★★★
ED: ★★★★★
HONESTLY, WE’RE NOT SO FANCY REALLY
Both so dependent on their connection to their ‘brand’ that they’d rather die than admit to owning a diamond-encrusted toilet seat, Adele claims the ‘biggest change’ to her life post-fame is swapping shopping at Tesco for Waitrose.
Ed says he ‘did what any bloke would do’ when he became wealthy and ‘sorted my family out, bought a sports car that I never drive because I look like a tit in it, bought a house and built a pub in my garden.’
No gold-plated private jets here, then, although Adele did reportedly spend £15,000 on a playhouse, complete with turrets, electricity and a balcony, for her son, and owns a £100,000 Porsche and an £80,000 Range Rover.
Sheeran, meanwhile, has been pictured holidaying on board a £1,800-a-night yacht in Ibiza, and was apparently caught speeding in that Aston Martin he claims he never drives.
ADELE: ★★★✩✩
ED: ★★✩✩✩
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