Ed Sheeran: The X Factor

What Ed Sheeran’s huge success showed was the endurance of the acoustic guitar in popular music—not just in the singer-songwriter or country-bluegrass realms, but also in the pure, unadulterated, teen-loving pop world. In this 2014 multimedia package, I talked to him and others about his music and guitars, and he performed an unplugged version of his hit “Thinking Out Loud.”