No video for this yet, so here’s our nearest guess to how it’ll look.

[Video][Website]
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Will Adams: Because I have red hair, freckles and the palest of skin, people think I’m far more Irish than I actually am. I also get a lot of doppelgänger talk, usually concerning celebrities I have nothing in common with besides red hair (Prince Harry, Andy Dalton, Rupert Grint, any Weasley). I haven’t gotten Ed Sheeran yet, which is a relief, because a) I run a comb through my hair more than once a week, and b) I’d like to think if I were to write a song for the Irish-ginger diaspora, I’d do better than dump signifiers all over my lyrics and feign authenticity by incorporating traditional folk elements, only to bury them beneath greasy pop-rock stew and a parody boy band chorus. Sheeran’s everyman brand combined with his chart and radio dominance now means that our most ubiquitous pop music is stuck recounting truly banal bar encounters, managing to make 2017 even more irritating.
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Hannah Jocelyn: Here’s how I imagine it went down: Producer Mike Elizondo: This is a terrible idea, Ed. Who’s going to listen to Irish folk-rap?  Ed: You just worked with Twenty One Pilots, didn’t you? This will be a hit too. Mixing engineer Mark “Spike” Stent: I already did the same thing for the Script, and that song was terrible. I’m not letting you get away with this. Ed: Yes you are m9. Make sure all the instruments awkwardly push against each other at all times and not one thing sticks out. That’s how it’ll be a hit. Warner Music: Irish guitar songs are on their way out, Mr. Sheeran. Ed: Nah m12 there are 400 million Irish people that just want representation even though the Corrs, the Pogues, and U2 are more than enough representation for anyone – besides, it’s gonna be a hit. Warner: Fine, we’ll put it on the album but we’re gonna stick it in the middle. *song becomes a hit* Everyone involved with the making of this goddamn song: What??? Ed: See? Told you!
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Katherine St Asaph: 1) I have pitched way too many excellent Irish artists — none trad-folk, imagine! — to impenetrable editor silence to have any time for Ed goddamn Sheeran steamrolling this fuck fantasy past supposed label objections that “Irish music doesn’t sell.” 2) Whatever you call “Irish music” will sell just fine if you attach a soft-rock chorus. Did you learn nothing from the last eight go-rounds? 3) Grafton Street is in Dublin. YouTube is currently arguing over whether there is, in fact, a pub there, or if it’s just on a side street, or if Sheeran’s talking about his awwww parents, or his awwwwww grandparents, or if facts matter at all. 4) At a certain point rapid-fire verse endings stop being impressive and start being a signthatyougotnoflow. 5) A couple people have suggested that part of the Ed Sheeran backlash comes from concealed revulsion at someone who looks like Ed Sheeran getting laid, which would be a fair critique (I made it about Meghan Trainor) if every relevant song didn’t sound like Sheeran posting a field report on /r/seduction. (The “Englishman” is key here — it comes from the same place, Sheeran preening in the formal language like a secondhand suit.) 6) Just listen to a Sharon Shannon record, christ.
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Katie Gill: I’m not sure what’s worse: the white boy rapping or the Irishy Irish Irishness of the actual singing parts. It’s like a Lucky Charms box suddenly gained sentience. At least this is Ed Sheeran embracing the fact that he’s inherently a goofball and not trying to give us a repeat of the gormless ‘sexiness’ of “Shape of You.”
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Rachel Bowles: I am always horrified by male vocalists that refer to an adult as a “pretty little girl.” Thankfully, Ed’s entitled nice guy act continues to be eviscerated in certain areas of the press, with the odd woeful exception lauding “Galway Girl” as evidence of how much he loves Ireland. And what better way to celebrate a national culture than through a tacky throwing together of lazy stereotypes to exoticise an Irish lass? Sorry, “pretty little girl.” *shudder* Lack of cultural specificity when calling on the imagery of a place or time is nothing new – Lana Del Rey’s “Brooklyn Baby”, for instance. It’s a reflection of globalisation that space and place are compressed and multiplied so that the local becomes generic, like your neighbourhood McDonalds. The difference with Lana is she has something to say: “my boyfriend’s pretty cool, but he’s not as cool as me.” Sheeran’s Galway girl could claim the same thing.
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William John: I don’t profess to have an extensive knowledge of the country, but the delivery of a sweeping list of clichés brings to mind Robbie Williams’ similarly negligent “Party Like A Russian“. At least Robbie had the grace to avoid the talk-rapping for which Sheeran has an inexplicable preference; there’s a showiness to it, as though he wants us to marvel at the number of syllables he can fit into each line. The problem with this is that he writes too untidily to give any impression of dexterity – quite apart from the #BrexitBritainisms, rhyming “pool” with “room” in the second verse is barely passable; on the next couplet, where “stool” is matched with “tunes”, he doesn’t even bother attempting to fit with cadence. The result is ugly; ugly, rotten, bad-smelling Doritos-dust music.
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Claire Biddles: Ed Sheeran is marketing “Galway Girl” to the “400 million people in the world that say they’re Irish, even if they’re not Irish”, citing “a huge gap in the market” for folk-pop left by The Corrs sometime in the late ’90s. It’s unsurprising, with all his pre-release corporate talk of markets and release schedules, that “Galway Girl” feels so targeted: it’s like he’s gone through his default wooing-an-average-looking-girl-with-crisps-and-a-half-pint-of-shandy narrative and stuck in phrases from an ‘Irish things’ word cloud every two lines. Fiddles! Whisky! Van Morrison! “Trad tunes”! (I bet B*Witched are pissed off.) I usually don’t give a shit if pop is written for a specific audience, but when it’s dressed up in the borrowed ~authenticity~ of folk music it’s tiresome. Also, I usually don’t give a shit as long as the song is good.
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Edward Okulicz: Disclaimer: I love The Corrs. This wears its Oirish influence about as snugly as “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” its rap ones. That means “not well.” The fiddling weighs a tonne rather than being delightful frosting, and the song is trying to be so many things at once to so many people that I’m almost jealous I can’t be one of them. Instead, I’m going to listen to “The Right Time.”
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Alfred Soto: See, when a Richard Thompson writes a folk song, his intonations and lyrics give some indication that he understands the form, if not the people. This fool is out for a kiss and a jig and an instant top ten. This gay Latino man has not a drop of Irishman in him, yet the “but” casually inserted in the first couplet offended him: why should it matter if the Irish girl fell in love with an Englishman? As for the rap, Sugar Ray and LFO did it better.
[1]

Micha Cavaseno: The true genesis of the rise of Ed Sheeran comes not in his singles, but in his throwaways. Years and years ago, Sheeran’s claim to fame was appearing on Youtube channel SB.TV’s “F64 Series”, a curation of freestyles by the UK’s best-regarded underground rap or grime MCs. It was an easy splash of cold water to go from various barrists to this ginger with an acoustic guitar who seemingly free-associated while making it muuuusical. Sheeran used it as a jumping point, comprehending that it does more impact not to be ‘exceptional’ but to be an ‘exception’. “Galway Girl”, for all its folkisms, is essentially still designed as a rap song, as proven by Sheeran’s frequent forays into Mraz-style overkill. That’s the real strength of Sheeran: his ability to graft what bubbles beneath the surface and bring it as close to the breach as possible, yet still keeping himself on top.
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Scott Mildenhall: It’s catchy, and an instrumental version wouldn’t be objectionable, but therein lies the problem that renders it near-unlistenable: it is not an instrumental. Little in music is as aggressively dull as the sound of Ed Sheeran rapping, and his agglomeration of Celtic cliches is just as clumsy as “Castle on the Hill”‘s depiction of a place he knows and loves well enough not to fetishise. It would feel generous to call his second consecutive “Van on the jukebox” line a motif; it’s more a hallmark of utterly uninspired songwriting. Still, Riverdance.
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