Ed Sheeran is a bit of a cheeky fellow, isn't he?
Before he performed "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" at the 2017 iHeartRadio Music Awards Sunday, he got a little handsy with the lead singer of Coldplay. "I saw Chris Martin about to go onstage and I walked up behind him and squeezed his ass. And then I was like, 'Why did I do that?'" the 26-year-old singer-songwriter tells E! News in an exclusive interview. "Sometimes you gotta do it, but...yeah. Do you know what? I do it to my mates. I don't know."
Martin apparently didn't mind, but even so, the impromptu moment made Sheeran blush. "I don't think we're that close," the musician confesses. "I've known him for a bit and I think we get on. There was definitely a moment where I was like, 'I probably shouldn't have done that.'"
Sheeran's performance at the award show came two days after the release of Divide, his third studio album. His latest effort set a new Spotify record, receiving 56,727,861 streams in the first day alone. (The Weeknd previously set the bar at 29 million with Starboy in late 2016.) Divide came after Sheeran went on a yearlong, self-imposed sabbatical. "Life is about balance, and my life wasn't balanced," he tells E! News. "Taking that off the scales balanced it, weirdly enough."
As Sheeran explains in Rolling Stone's March 23 issue, a single Twitter comment could ruin his entire day. "Everyone online was saying, 'Ed's going bald.' And I'm not. But I convinced myself that I was. Ginger hair is just very fair. My hair is completely fine," he says. "I was also quite big at the time, so I kind of got a complex about two things I would have never given a f--k about."
Sheeran began drinking more around that time, which worried his songwriting partner Johnny McDaid. And, after Forbes reported he earned $57 million in 2015, many his friendships became even "f--ked" up, Sheeran says. "I was getting texts from people with pictures of cars going, 'I'd like this for my birthday, please. This one's only .06 percent of your annual income.'"
So, after the 2016 Grammys, Sheeran and girlfriend Cherry Seaborn went on a globe-trotting adventures, making stops in Ghana, Iceland, Japan and other countries. He wasn't keen on staying in five-star hotels and living like the rocks tar he is. "It was definitely living up to the student traveling stereotype," Sheeran tells E! News. "There were elements I wanted to do normally. I did a proper road trip where I rented a mini and drove up the coast of Australia."
For more from Sheeran, watch E! News tonight at 7 and 11, only on E!