There are layers to the story behind Ed Sheeran’s Halloween 2024 costume.
The 33-year-old Grammy winner celebrated the annual spooky holiday on Oct. 31 by dressing up in a monkey costume — a nod to a certain AI-generated image of him that became a popular online meme.
In the photo, Sheeran is hunched over a table, looking directly into the camera and smiling while wearing a monkey costume and holding an original AI-generated photo on his phone.
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Ed Sheeran.
Ed Sheeran/Instagram
“Haters gonna say it’s AI,” he wrote in an Instagram caption on Thursday with two hashtags: #halloweenbruv and #feltcutemightdeletelater.
The original AI-generated photo is quite similar, showing Sheeran in a monkey costume, holding an iPhone and smiling at the camera while on his hands and knees on top of a table in an Apple Store.
The tweaked image is based on a pre-existing popular photo of a boy in a monkey costume using an iPad in an Apple Store that became popular online in the early 2010s.
Ed Sheeran reveals why he ‘hasn’t had a phone since 2015’: ‘I was just losing interaction in real life’
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Ed Sheeran in Napa in May 2024.
Jim Bennett/Getty
In previous years, Sheeran dressed up as Chucky from the Child’s playgingerbread man, Austin Powers, Ron Weasley from Harry Potter and more Halloween characters.
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Sheeran’s knowledge of the Apple Store meme may come as a surprise to fans who know he doesn’t spend much time online and has “got rid” of his phone. During the June performance at Therapuss with Jake Shanehe admitted, “I haven’t had a phone since 2015.”
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Ed Sheeran in New York in May 2024.
Jamie McCarthy/Getty
“I have something that I would like to video things that would then appear on social media,” he explained, “but it’s not like a working phone.”
The “Thinking Out Loud” musician decided to go phone-free in December 2015 — when he realized how many contacts he had left before his career took off.
“I had the same number since I was about 15, I think,” he said, “and I became famous and I had 10,000 contacts in my phone that would just…people would just text all the time. And I was just constantly in contact with a lot of people.”
Categories: Trends
Source: HIS Education