• Ed Sheeran says he’d “be a virgin” if he wasn’t a musician
• The pop star’s comment had to do with his love of playing video games
• Harry Styles had also made a similar joke

For Ed Sheeran, catching em’ all requires a little self-deprecation.

On Aug. 3, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter shared a clip of himself sitting on the floor of a stadium during ongoing Mathematics Tour. This weekend, he played two gigs at Darius and Girėnas Stadium in Lithuania.

But he wasn’t just sitting down for a quick breather during soundcheck. Instead, he was playing Pokémon Stadium on the empty stadium’s jumbotron.

“If I wasn’t a musician, I’d be a virgin,” Sheeran joked in the video.

The 33-year-old “Perfect” artist, who would’ve been 9 years old when the game first came out on the Nintendo 64 in Europe, was playing off of his Nintendo Switch apparently hooked up the big screen. “Pokemon Stadium in the stadium,” Sheeran captioned the clip, alongside the hashtags, “#superawesomewickedcool #wannacometomybirthdayparty #itlbefunpromise #cake.”

Sheeran’s joke certainly got a rouse out of his fans in the video’s comment section, where one fan wrote, “harry said the same thing,” apparently referring to a previous comment Harry Styles made in an interview.

“but who do you actually believe let’s be honest,” Sheeran commented in response.

Another fan also jokingly pressed Sheeran on his past comments on video games: “So years ago when you said you didn’t like video games you were lying 😂💙,” they wrote, to which Sheeran answered: “Pokémon isn’t a video game it’s a lifestyle choice.”

He also has quite the history with Pokémon, as Sheeran’s track “Celestial” appeared in Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet in 2022. “I’ve played Pokémon since I was in primary school,” Sheeran said in a statement at the time, per Rolling Stone. “Me and my brother used to have different versions of the games and would trade Pokémon together ‘til we each completed our Pokédex,” Sheeran said in a statement. “I loved the cards, but the games are what I lost myself in. I loved the whole world they created; it kept me distracted if there was negative stuff happening in my life/school that I wanted to avoid. It was a world I could escape into, and I’ve played it ever since.”

And while Sheeran appears to be a big Nintendo guy — or at least a Pokémon guy — for the most part, he’s keeping electronics in his life to a minimum.

Appearing on talk show Therapuss with Jake Shane in June, the “Shape of You” singer revealed he hasn’t “had a phone since 2015,” and for one particular reason. At the time, Sheeran offered to share his email address with the host in lieu of a phone number, telling him: “I don’t have a number… that isn’t me playing you off either.”

“I have something to like video stuff that would then go up on social media,” he said, “but it’s not like an active working phone.”

Living without a smartphone, Sheeran explained on the show, was a decision he made in December 2015 when he realized the amount of contacts he had saved from before he was famous. “I had the same number from like age 15, I think,” he said, “and I got famous and I had 10,000 contacts in my phone that would just… people would just text the whole time. And I was just constantly in touch with a lot of people.”

“I feel like with phones, everyone expects you to reply, and if you don’t reply, it’s rude,” he said. “Sometimes you’re just not in a headscape to reply, you’re busy or doing whatever, but then you reply, then they reply back… and suddenly you’re in like 40 conversations at once.”

What works now for the Grammy winner is keeping in touch with pals over email. “I got an iPad, I moved everything onto email, which I reply to once a week,” he said.

Sheeran is currently embarking on his Mathematics Tour, which wraps in Germany in 2025.