After the backlash when the mural announced, Hayley Holt’s condemnation of it, the mural’s completion and defacement, the Ed Sheeran mural saga has come to a glorious end, hopefully to be forgotten forever.
Ed Sheeran himself has followed his pattern of pandering to his five or six fans (we are sure the 21.2 million Instagram followers are just his mates who feel sorry for him) and taken a poorly lit selfie in front of the mural of his own face.
We can almost hear the sigh of relief from Dunedin city officials, who can now justify the $8350 spent on the mural since it has gotten a modicum of publicity for the city on Ed’s Instagram story. Discerning readers will note that we did say Instagram story – not Instagram feed – so the post will vanish 24 hours after it was placed – only to be remembered in articles such as this one.
Ed Sheeran’s selfie in front of the Bath Street mural – a photo that will go down in history as the most ginger photo ever to be taken.
After an Otago Daily Times poll revealed that 59% of people were against the mural, and Breakfast presenter Hayley Holt spoke out against it, the mural went ahead anyway, with the hope that the Brit would take a selfie in front of it.
A noted panderer, having pulled such stunts as wearing an All Blacks jersey with “Holt” on the back to (very publically) win over Hayley Holt, Ed Sheeran, predictably, took the bait and the selfie.
Although the hashtag he used, “#muralselfie”, is not a trending, or even established hashtag and is not likely to garner any extra views, the fact that the ginger crooner has 21 million followers might. On top of this, his presence and shows in Dunedin is predicted to bring crowds of 60,000 people to Dunedin, earning the town $34 million – enough to buy 4,071 murals of Ed Sheeran.
The point where it gets a little cringey (well, let’s be honest, we’ve been cringing since the mural was announced) is when we see that Dunedin has replaced the E and D in the “Dunedin” signs at the Dunedin airport with blue versions of the letters so it says “Ed” in the middle of Dunedin.
Embarrassing signs that pander to Ed Sheeran at the Dunedin airport as seen on Ed’s Instagram story.
The graffiti on the mural may have been random vandals, but Dunedin officials themselves paid money for those airport signs to be defaced.
So congratulations, Ed! You have our vote when you inevitably run for mayor of DunEdin.
