It wouldn’t take many people long to name a song by Ed Sheeran. Perfect, Thinking Out Loud, Shivers, and others have played on the radio so often that even non-fans could recognize them. Once, at a youth event I attended with Army teens in Germany, Perfect came on the speaker. The whole room sang the first line in unison and some began ball-dancing along to it with their friends. The song that made Ed Sheeran such a recognizable singer is A Team, a social commentary on homelessness in the UK.
A Team was inspired by Angel, a woman Ed met while playing covers at a homeless shelter. In an interview with Total Guitar, Ed described how was invited to play at the homeless shelter by a friend after he finished a gig in London. On the train home, he wrote A Team. According to Old Time Music, he wanted to write a song not just for Angel, but anyone else in a situation similar to hers, and to bring compassionate attention to the issues of poverty, sex trafficking, and drug addiction.
The music in A Team is acoustic. The only instruments are a piano and guitar. The melody is catchy, which contributed to the song’s success. It’s easy to sing along when it comes on the radio. The upbeat melody is effective because it gives the song a hopeful tone, and lightens up the darker lyrics.
The verses of A Team give a vivid description of the song’s subject. The specific descriptive words help the listener to visualize what life is like for the subject. In just a few words, the listener learns a lot about the subject.
As a poetry enthusiast, I appreciate the poetic techniques used in both verses. There is a lot of alliteration and rhyming (or near rhyming at least). These techniques help the piece to be smooth sonically. It also illustrates Sheeran’s skill as a writer.
The verses don’t use full sentences – only fragments. This is a useful technique for writing music or poetry, given the limited amount of space to get to the point. In this instance, the fragmented descriptions could also represent the broken, fragmented life the protagonist lives.
Verse 1
Verse one starts off, “White lips, pale face / breathing in snowflakes”. Taken in a literal sense, these lines mean that Angel’s face is pale white because she is out in the cold. This gives the listener information about the setting for the song: winter. It also sets the tone for the song. Snow has a positive, nostalgic connotation in most cases, but here it is more serious because it is making Angel’s face pale and white, which implies it may also be numb.
Looking at the first line in a figurative sense, Angel’s white lips and pale face may also represent the numbness she feels inside. She has become so accustomed to her life that she is numb to it. And the thing making her numb is the snowflakes – a figurative term for the cocaine she is addicted to.
The next line, “Burn lungs, sour taste,” gives more context for Angel’s situation. It refers to the way Angel’s cocaine addiction is harming her physically. This line demonstrates the direness of her situation. She is destroying herself, and yet she is still addicted.
The last three lines of verse one introduce a new aspect of Angel’s story: prostitution. “Light’s gone, day’s end / Struggling to pay rent / Long nights, strange men”. There is so much information given in just these three lines! The listener learns that she is working long nights to pay her rent, and at the end of the verse, the speaker reveals that the strange men are the reason she works so late.
This is an example of expert diction and use of pathos. The word “struggling” alone creates a connection between the listener and the subject. It gives the listener a reason to care about Angel. In the next line, the phrase “strange men” is also effective. There are many other words Ed could have used to describe these men besides strange but the vagueness of “strange men” clues the listener in that something is definitely not right. The phrase has a negative connotation. It brings back memories of stalkers or creeps and stirs up feelings of protectiveness for Angel.
Verse 2
Verse two describes Angel’s belongings, which reveal more about her. The first line of verse two is simple yet brilliant – “Ripped gloves, raincoat.” From these four words, the listener learns that Angel can’t afford to replace her clothes and that she has been spending a lot of time in the rain. England is the assumed setting of the song, since that’s where Ed is from, and it rains often there. So, a raincoat would be a necessity for someone spending a lot of time outside.
The next line, “Tried to swim and stay afloat,” has two meanings. It could refer to the rain mentioned in the previous line. If it were to flood, Angel would be in a dangerous situation and possibly have to swim. This illustrates one of the problems for homeless people in England. The other meaning is that Angel is trying to stay afloat in the metaphorical sea of her struggles.
“Dry house, wet clothes” further emphasizes the idea from the first line of the verse, that Angel has been out in the rain. The detail about the house being dry shows the illusion of safety that the house gives to Angel. However, even at the house – which may be her house where she is being prostituted – she is plagued with financial troubles. This is shown in the next line, “loose change, bank notes.” Interestingly enough, Loose Change is the title of Ed Sheeran’s EP which was released the year before A Team, so this line could be a reference to the EP. This isn’t a stretch because the second title on the EP is “Homeless.”
The next line is “weary-eyed, dry throat.” The detail about her being “weary-eyed” shows the impact of her late nights described in the earlier line, “Light’s gone, day’s end.” Her dry throat is a callback to “burn lungs, sour taste,” because it shows how cocaine is destroying Angel’s body. Although this line doesn’t introduce any new ideas, it is still effective because it connects the verses, and emphasizes central ideas by adding more details related to them.
The last line in verse two is “call girl, no phone.” This line could have many meanings. One interpretation is that “call girl,” describes Angel. A “call girl” is a prostitute who makes appointments through the phone. If Angel is a call girl, not affording a phone would clearly present a problem for her.
Another interpretation, and my personal interpretation, is that the line is a conversation between Angel and someone who wants her to call. The person who wants her to call could be a family member, who she doesn’t call out of shame, pride, or because leaving the family contributed to her situation. Or, the person is one of the strange men Angel spends her nights with. Ed leaves it up to the listener whether she is being truthful when she tells the person she can’t call because she doesn’t have a phone.
Chorus
The chorus is repeated three times and gives more information about Angel and others in situations like hers. More rhyming and figurative language in the chorus add to the poetic nature of the song.
The first two lines of the pre-chorus, “And they say / She’s in the Class A Team” is where the title of the song comes from. This is a clever play on words because cocaine, the drug Angel is using, is classified as a “Class A” drug by the UK Misuse of Drugs Act. When Ed released this song, he was mostly only known by British listeners so his audience would have been familiar with the term.
The next few lines of the pre-chorus show the effects Angel’s drug abuse has on her mental health and illustrates that she is in a cycle which feels impossible to break. “Stuck in her daydream / Been this way since eighteen / But lately her face seems / Slowly sinking, wasting / Crumbling like pastries”. I love these lines because of the way the words sound. The alliteration in “slowly sinking, wasting” appeals to the listener’s ear. The simile “crumbling like pastries” is just genius.
The first few lines of the chorus, “And they scream / The worst things in life come free to us / ‘cause we’re just under the upperhand / and go mad for a couple grams” shows that Angel is not alone in her struggles. There are others like her who are stuck in the cycle of addiction and prostitution.
The next lines show the lack of choice Angel has in her situation. “And she don’t want to go outside tonight” shows that she prostitutes herself reluctantly. The lines “And in a pipe she flies to the Motherland / Or sells love to another man” shows that Angel feels she only has two options for how to spend her nights: smoking crack or selling her body. In the last chorus, these lines are all changed to the third person, plural, which emphasizes the universality of Angel’s struggles.
The repeated refrain at the end of the chorus, and the bridge both demonstrate that Angel’s way of life will kill her if she doesn’t get help. The choruses end with “It’s too cold outside For angels to fly, Angels to fly.” Flight is associated with hope, so Ed is saying it’s too cold for her to keep up hoping for things to change. The bridge is more explicit about this idea. “An angel will die / Covered in white / Closed eye / And hoping for a better life / This time, we’ll fade out tonight / Straight down the line”.
The end of the song is what really brings this idea home. Ed repeats the phrase “to fly” over and again, and there is a new line at the end of the last chorus. The new line, “For angels to die” feels like a call to action for listeners. It is meant to make the listener want to do something to save Angel.
Few songs have had the impact on an artist’s career as A Team had on Ed Sheeran’s. More importantly, the song has influenced countless people’s hearts and made them more compassionate towards sex workers and homeless people. It is a strong example of a song with successful emotional appeal, poetic lyrics, and an eloquent message.
Lyrics from Genius and A-Z lyrics.
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