Showing support for the American Institute for Stuttering, Ed Sheeran attended the Freeing Voices Changing Lives Benefit Gala in New York City on Monday night (June 8). During his speech, the “Runaway” singer told the crowd that
he struggled for years with stuttering and it wasn’t until he listened
to Eminem that he was able to defeat his impediment.
Ed explained, “I was a very, very weird child. I had a
port-wine birthmark on my face that got lasered off when I was very
young; one day, they forgot to put the anesthetic on, and ever since
then, I had a stutter…. And I lacked an eardrum on one side of my ear,
so stuttering was actually the least of my problems. The hardest thing
was knowing what to say but not really being able to express it the
right way. My Uncle Jim told my dad that Eminem was the next Bob Dylan –
it’s pretty similar, it’s all just storytelling – so my dad bought me
The Marshall Mathers LP when I was nine years old, not knowing what was
on it. I learned every word of it, back to front, by the time I was ten.
Eminem raps very fast and melodically and percussively, and it helped
me get rid of the stutter. Stuttering is not a thing you have to be
worried about at all. Even if you have quirks and weirdness, you
shouldn’t be worried about that… Embrace your weirdness. From a
stuttering point of view, don’t treat it as an issue. Work through it
and get the treatment you want to get, but don’t ever see it as a plight
on your life. Carry on pushing forward.”
