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"  In the past year, 23-year-old singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran went from opening for Taylor Swift to selling out Madison Square Garden in his own right\u2014a meteoric rise propelled in part by his 9.4 million Twitter followers. Dude&amp;#039;s got friends in high places, too. Jamie Foxx let Sheeran crash on his couch on an early trip to the States. Swift invited him over to jump on her trampoline and write music. And while tunes like Sheeran&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Lego House&amp;quot; have tended toward the sentimental, his latest album, X (pronounced &amp;quot;multiply&amp;quot;), finds the redheaded Brit maturing into an ax-wielding writer of confessional dance pop. In the track &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; which recounts a girlfriend cheating on him with one of his mates (&amp;quot;I never saw him as a threat/ Till you disappeared with him to have sex&amp;quot;), the perps are rumored to be Ellie Goulding and One Direction&amp;#039;s Niall Horan\u2014but Sheeran is too much of a gentleman to comment (see below). As for other burning inquiries, we turned the column over to Sheeran&amp;#039;s fans, and the &amp;quot;Sing&amp;quot; singer weighed in on what&amp;#039;s sexy, losing his virginity, and dating fans. Related: Ed Sheeran Talks Tattoos, Taylor Swift, and Drinking Tequila with the Royal Family A lot of readers\u2014including Kiera (@shameonmeow_)\u2014want to know if you&amp;#039;ll go to prom with them. The thing is, if I say yes to everyone, I&amp;#039;m gonna disappoint a lot of girls. Did you go to your own prom? Yeah, but it wasn&amp;#039;t a big thing. England tends to follow some American traditions. I wish you&amp;#039;d follow some of our traditions. Whenever I come to America I can never find good tea. Related: Taylor Swift Made a Drake Needlepoint for Ed Sheeran Noted. @Dream_inStyle asks via Twitter, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s your favorite quality in a woman?&amp;quot; A sense of humor. I think that&amp;#039;s key for any long-lasting relationship. Ever been out with a woman who had no sense of humor? I have more sense than that, but I speak to women with no sense of humor quite a lot. I met this model last year. Her meal for the day was a cotton ball soaked in Diet Coke. I don&amp;#039;t want to be friends with somebody like that. We got a lot of questions about Taylor Swift. Name one thing we don&amp;#039;t know about her. She&amp;#039;s a massive Law &amp;amp;amp; Order fan. Or is it CSI? It&amp;#039;s one of them\u2014on a continuous loop in the house. Claire Wind (@got_claire) mentions that you sold out Madison Square Garden three times. What felt better: That or losing your virginity? Probably selling out Madison Square Garden three times. Your first time wasn&amp;#039;t memorable? It&amp;#039;s a benchmark in my life, but it wasn&amp;#039;t the best thing I&amp;#039;ve ever done. Angie R. (@artboxfashion33) wants to know, &amp;quot;What inspires you to write lyrics: life experience or idealism?&amp;quot; Life experience. Every song I&amp;#039;ve written\u2014apart from the song for The Hobbit\u2014has been from life experience. Do you worry about offending someone? Yeah, I really put my foot in it a couple times on this record. I&amp;#039;m thinking of &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; which is about infidelity. Have you heard from the girl who cheated on you? No, but I&amp;#039;ve heard things. I&amp;#039;ve heard things about what the reaction was. Kate (@elliesgoulding) asks, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s your opinion on the crazy gossip that kicks up once you write a song?&amp;quot; I just think it&amp;#039;s best if I keep quiet and they keep quiet. On &amp;quot;Sing&amp;quot; you talk about a woman who surprised you with a &amp;quot;bottle of water filled with tequila.&amp;quot; Is that what you&amp;#039;re looking for? The point of it was the surprise. I was expecting water, and I got tequila. It was a shock. I thought, This night is about to get really fun. You&amp;#039;ve said the new album is about &amp;quot;drunken regret.&amp;quot; Tweeter \u2028@nycsheeran asks: &amp;quot;If you had one chance to redo anything you&amp;#039;ve done in life, what would it be?&amp;quot; Nothing. I&amp;#039;ve learned from every experience. Every mistake you make, if you learn from it, makes the next relationship a little bit better. Could you love someone who didn&amp;#039;t love your music? Yeah, yeah. [Laughs] I think there&amp;#039;s a difference between loving the work and respecting it. If I dated, I don&amp;#039;t know, a horse jockey\u2014I&amp;#039;m not a massive fan of horse races, but I could still respect what the person does. Do you think of yourself as a modern-day sex symbol? I wouldn&amp;#039;t say that. I think men with guitars who sing sensitive songs will just always have that sort of potential. Gabby Vargas (@gabbyvargass) asks, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the most meaningful song you have written?&amp;quot; There&amp;#039;s a new song on the record called &amp;quot;Thinking Out Loud.&amp;quot; The second verse says, &amp;quot;When my hair&amp;#039;s all gone and my memories fade, and I don&amp;#039;t remember my name, when my hands don&amp;#039;t play the strings the same way, will you still love me the same?&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s important to find someone who is into you for you. You&amp;#039;re already worrying about \u2028old age? I can be either an 80-year-old man or a 16-year-old boy. It depends on the day. You write sensitive songs. Do women expect you to be a pushover? No, I think women expect me to be a lothario\u2014with a different girl in every city. That&amp;#039;s what they hear musicians are like. I don&amp;#039;t think people expect that of you. Lana (@lana_plus) asks, &amp;quot;Do you have a guiding sentence by which you live your life?&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s a Bill Cosby quote: &amp;quot;The key to failure is to try and please everyone.&amp;quot; People say, &amp;quot;This is my favorite song. You should write another song like that.&amp;quot; At the end of the day, fuck them. Be selfish. Why bother to please everyone? Please yourself. The rest will follow. This article appeared in the July 2014 issue of ELLE magazine. Behind the Cover: Taylor Swift       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/a18/ed-sheeran-interview-on-music-dating/>