At Rogers Arena on Friday, June 19

Past the beastly figures of the Canucks and the tiny cans of Stella Artois for $9.50, a very average-seeming 25-year-old from Framlingham, England, with nothing but a guitar and loop pedal, miraculously filled Rogers Arena. The simple question “Why?” loomed in the shadows as the house lights dimmed and the crowd went bonkers for Ed Sheeran, as if the scruffy tunesmith was truly the Second Coming of Ron Weasley.

The answer was not so simple, though Sheeran’s resemblance to that similarly flare-haired Harry Potter character has earned him a lot of attention—so much so that Rupert Grint, the actor who played Weasley in the films, agreed to star in Sheeran’s “Lego House” video as his doppelganger. In any case, there was much more to the night than some lewd jokes about Sheeran’s magic wand or, if you prefer, whomping willow. Openers Rixton, a Manchester-based power-pop band, had almost enough draw and charisma to coheadline, eliciting wild cheers with its cover of Beyoncé's "Crazy in Love".

With the invasively catchy hooks, fancy footwork, and synchronicity of a boy band, the four-piece held the attention of the audience impressively well, even if its swaggering grooves sounded too much like peers The 1975. Frontman Jake Roche projected an easy, arena-big confidence as he shimmied and thrusted around the stage--unsurprising when you consider his background is as a soap-opera actor.

Fancying himself something of a comedic Justin Timberlake, Roche sparked with boundless pep-pill energy as he belted out in falsetto, took selfies with the front row, and made slightly obnoxious wisecracks like “For this next song, if you’ve got anything that shines, like a lighter, a cellphone, or a small child, put it up in the air and wave it around!”

Then, it was the moment the horde of Sheerios, aka Ed Sheeran diehards, had been waiting for. No introduction needed, the acoustic-wielding troubadour launched into the humbly anthemic “I’m A Mess." There were no frills, no giant inflatable set pieces, just a series of video panels hung overhead to adorn the stage, screening digital art that at times looked like those tacky old Windows Media Player music visualizations. 

“It’s my job to sing for you, but your job is to be singing just as loud!” Sheeran announced, with a composed, genuine smile that didn’t wane the whole night. The force from the crowd as it chanted along in perfect unison swelled like a heaving sea of blissed-out sound. Composed of every type of music fan, from chaperoned teenybopper to bachelorette-party girl to octogenarian, the audience shuffled its feet with heartfelt abandon to the hits from Sheeran’s debut album, +, and his latest record, x.

 “He could’ve been an altar boy,” one smitten dude remarked, as Sheeran hit some particularly angelic high notes in the bubbly bittersweetness of “Lego House”. Perhaps mixing up his Rogers Arena event dates, the dude next to him proceeded to let out an intensely guttural hockey-nut scream after every song.

Addressing a complaint he had received that he was playing against a backing track or with a band hidden from view, Sheeran paused to amiably explain how his set was always performed live and solo. With the aid of his state-of-the-art custom loop pedal, he is able to overdub layers of guitar and beats live, achieving the full, multi-tracked, and larger-than-life sound that seems impossible at first glance. 

Banging out soulful rhythms on the body of his six-string, Sheeran then coasted into the surprisingly hip-hop-inspired “Don’t”, interspersing it with bits of Blackstreet’s cheesy “No Diggity”. Can a folksy singer-songwriter as white as Miley Cyrus trying to twerk pull that off? Nope. Should Sheeran ever again attempt beat-boxing? God, no. That said, his rapid-fire raps in the following track “Drunk”, leading into a medley of Motown hits, would have verged on cringeworthy if not for the fact that he performed them with so much fervent conviction.

Let’s be honest: Sheeran’s bread and butter are the Jason Mraz-style love ballads that seem crafted for soft-rock radio. Chart-toppers like the honey-drenched “Thinking Out Loud” and the lilting “The A Team” lit up the arena with a chorus of voices and cellphone glimmers. But these simplistic ditties knowingly pander to the mainstream demographic, while sounding not much more memorable than what you’d hear from someone busking on the street.

 Sure, Sheeran’s got passion and technical talent. But as the night went on and the set became tiresomely repetitive, it’s no wonder that parts of the audience began to chatter. One bored senior even fell dead asleep.

After the Bruno Mars-ish finale “Sing”, the camera that had been filming Sheeran then turned on the audience, and the crowd got to wave goodbye to itself on the jumbo screens as Sheeran ran shyly off stage. One Sheerio outpoured to her friend, “That was so amazing! Wasn’t that amazing? You know it was, just admit it!” And it was as much a testament to Sheeran’s ability to command a fanbase as to the inescapability of popular opinion.