Ed Sheeran Nominated For ‘Most Offensive’ Award [VIDEO]
Ed Sheeran didn’t receive many Grammy nominations, but surprisingly he has been nominated for a ‘most offensive’ award. Here’s what happened.
By nowproducerdave on December 6, 2017
Ok, I know he wasn’t really nominated for much in this year’s Grammys, but most offensive? We’ll explain what’s happening below.
It’s a long story, but Ed Sheeran was recently (it was released in March) in a short documentary that was supposed to raise awareness of the poverty crisis in Liberia. In the documentary, Ed visits a little boy who has been living on the streets. In the video he talks about where he is, and even mentions the sound of waves crashing on a beach. “It’s quite odd, because I’m on a beach, and you can hear the waves crashing, and you would assume that hot weather beach would be paradise, but this is far from it. I’ve never felt so on edge anywhere that I’ve been, my entire life.” The boy, named JD, lost his mother and grandfather to ebola, and his father left, leaving the boy to fend for himself on the streets. JD tells Ed about wanting to go to school and be President some day. “Sick. I love that,” Ed responds to the boy’s dreams.
Ed said that his first response was to just take care of JD and his friends, and even asks if he can just pay for them to stay in a house until they get into school. This is where the organization giving the “award” comes into play. They’re saying that, while they can’t fault Ed for his generosity, it’s his “small-scale intervention” that’s the problem. The point of the video, they’re saying, was to raise awareness for the big-picture problem, not to just basically pick-and-choose who gets help on the spot. They’re also arguing that it’s more “a video about Ed Sheeran” than a video that looks at the larger problem in Liberia. In a statement, the group says “The video should be less about Ed shouldering the burden alone but rather appealing to the wider world to step in…Is Ed Sheeran willing to pay for the boy’s housing forever? What an irresponsible thing to do, and for this video to glorify that is terrible.”
So basically they’re saying that the video that Ed Sheeran was in is more of a publicity thing for Ed himself, rather than a genuine attempt at helping the country that’s suffering. Sounds a little harsh to award him with the “most offensive” title in the “Rusty Radiator Awards” for that, but the Norwegian Students’ and Academics’ International Assistance Fund is trying to make a change to “the way fundraising campaigns communicate, and to engage people in issues of poverty and development.”
Do you think they’re being too harsh, or could the documentary have better focussed on the bigger picture? Here it is just below, if you’d like to watch the film:
