11-year-old's guitar doodles turned into EP: Sade Olutola talks backstage at Reading about how Ed Sheeran inspired her
Sade Olutola, a new singer from South London, was interviewed backstage at Reading 2026. She talked about her debut EP "Arrow Heart", released in February this year, which was inspired by her habit of imitating Ed Sheeran's drawing symbols on guitars and naming them when she was 11 years old.
When she was 11 years old, Sade Olutola drew a pattern of an arrow through a heart on the guitar and named the guitar Mexi. She also wrote the words "Arrow Heart" on the top of her lyric book, making a list of songs that had never been released. More than ten years later, this graffiti became her first EP of the same name, released in February this year.
The rising pop singer from South London made her debut on the Reading Festival stage on August 29. After performing at The Canopy, she was interviewed by NME backstage. She couldn't help laughing when talking about this past incident that was only reminded of her by a friend. "I discovered Ed Sheeran when I was 11 years old, and my friend Ella introduced me to it," Olutola said. "When he was on tour, he would draw symbols on the guitar that he wanted to express, like plus signs, division signs, or multiplication signs, and then give the guitar a name. I did the same thing, but I was thinking, 'I want to make my own cool version.'"
She drew an arrow through the heart, named the guitar Mexi, and wrote down the dusty track list. "Now I'm thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to release my first EP, and I want to pay tribute to her.' That was the first time I had the ambition to release a work, although it didn't really happen at the time."
The story of the EP opening song "2099" also comes from her habit of translating emotions into images. "That song makes no sense at all," she laughed, before explaining her state of mind at the time of its creation. She had just discovered that her partner was cheating on her, and her anger reminded her of fire: "I thought, if it was the 1600s, they would burn me as a witch because I was so angry that I wanted to kill everyone. It's so dramatic, I don't know why I thought that." After writing the passage in 1625, she decided, "We have gone back to the past, let's go to the future," so she extended her emotions to 2099 - even in that era, she imagined that she would still be as angry.
Olutola has a full schedule this summer: she opened for Lexa Gates at KOKO, also participated in Meltdown curated by Harry Styles, and opened for Fousheé. "I am Lexa Gates' biggest fan, and my producer and I got to know each other because we both like Lexa Gates," she said. "I also love Fousheé very much. I feel like a little girl living in a dream. The child in my heart is very happy."
In June, she held her first headline show at The Grace in London. She described the performance as "significant": "Those tickets were hard to buy, and I knew everyone at the venue came specifically to see me. I was very grateful, and to be honest, I couldn't believe that the tickets would be sold out. I didn't expect it at all. I shed some tears, but I was very happy."
Talking about performances of different sizes, she said that her mentality when facing the audience is always the same: "I always perform with the mentality of 'no one knows me here', so I always think about the best way to entertain the audience, such as interacting with the crowd. I also bring this mentality into my solo singing."
