Ed Sheeran may be one of Britain’s most beloved exports, but his take on the state of London still has the internet arguing eighteen months later. In a July 2024 appearance on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend podcast, the Grammy-winning singer bluntly declared that “literally every area of London is sketchy,” insisting that both wealthy neighborhoods and working-class postcodes are increasingly vulnerable to opportunistic crime. The comment fizzled at the time—but in late 2025, amid rising knife attacks, viral moped robberies, and a political fight over policing, the clip has roared back to life on X.

Sheeran wasn’t speaking as a detached celebrity. Though he still lives primarily in Suffolk, the superstar owns 22 rental properties across London and frequently stays in the capital for work. His complaint, he suggested, wasn’t that the city is collapsing—it’s that crime no longer respects geography. “You just have to not do stupid sh*t,” he told Von. “If you wander around with a Louis Vuitton bag or a 200-grand watch, you’re going to get robbed. But just don’t do that.” And unlike U.S. cities, where he said danger feels “segregated,” London strikes him as unpredictable: “You cannot be anywhere.”

His comments hit a nerve. Knife crime soared past 15,000 recorded incidents in June 2025. Westminster now logs some of Britain’s highest robbery rates. And luxury-watch thefts have spiked so sharply that affluent boroughs like Kensington—once shorthand for safety—now produce viral videos of broad-daylight moped ambushes. Realtors report luxury sales down as much as 40 percent in some zones, a drop Sheeran himself has reportedly absorbed as a landlord.

Not everyone buys the doom narrative. Statistically, London remains safer than many major American cities, and homicide rates are still below their early-2000s peak. But X tells a different story: an endless scroll of residents lamenting “vile” conditions, tourists swearing off return trips, and political partisans citing Sheeran to bolster criticism of Mayor Sadiq Khan. One Suffolk native sniped that Sheeran’s view is celebrity paranoia—“he thinks Notting Hill is Peckham.” Others argue he’s simply saying what locals already feel but are afraid to admit.

The resurfaced clip also dovetails with another Sheeran headline: rumors he was “moving to America.” In fall 2025, the singer clarified that he isn’t fleeing the UK but temporarily shifting to the U.S. during the North American leg of his Loop tour. “I’m not moving,” he wrote, quashing tax-evasion conspiracies and tabloids claiming London had become unlivable. His family will split time between the U.S. and Suffolk, and Sheeran has been repeatedly spotted back in the UK—including at Leicester Square premieres in summer 2025.

Still, his offhand comments now feel like a prism for London’s identity crisis. Viral threads featuring Sheeran’s quote routinely rack up millions of views, with 80 percent of replies painting the city as unsafe and poorly governed. Critics call it melodrama; supporters call it realism. And in a Britain jittery over crime, immigration, and economic stagnation, even a pop star’s casual gripe becomes cultural shorthand.

Whether Sheeran exaggerated or struck a nerve depends on who you ask. But one thing is clear: Londoners are no longer shrugging off street crime as an unlucky one-off. And in 2025, Ed Sheeran’s year-old warning suddenly feels less like celebrity hyperbole—and more like an uncomfortable truth the country is still struggling to face.