What does Tenerife Sea mean?

Ed Sheeran: Tenerife Sea Meaning

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Album cover for Tenerife Sea album cover

Tenerife Sea Lyrics

You look so wonderful in your dress
I love your hair like that
The way it falls on the side of your neck
Down your shoulders and back

We are surrounded by all of these lies
And people who talk too much
You've got that kind of look in your...

  1. 1TOP RATED

    #1 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Dec 15th 2014 !⃝

    This song is about a couple "surrounded by [...] lies" (Line 5) but they are oblivious to it all. Ed describes a woman who draws his attention away from conflict because he is "so in love" (12). Figurative language and diction are used throuout the song to show that love can blind people of outside conflict. Imagery in the song describes the woman that the speaker is in love with. He describes her hair and "The way it falls on the side of [her] neck / Down [her] shoulders and back" (3-4). The image created here is simple.Her hair, not in any fancy style, is not something that would normally draw someone's attention.The fact that he has taken time to describe something so simple shows just how easily she can distract him from conflict. The image of the woman is further described with a metaphor that compares the "blue in [her] eyes" (16) to "the Tenerife Sea" (17). Tenerife is part of a chain of Spanish islands called the Canary Islands. Islands, as most people know, are a land form that is completely surrounded by water.By comparing her eyes to the ocean that surrounds an island, Ed is showing that instead of looking at the surrounding negativity, he looks at her eyes. He also says that the woman "looks so beautiful in this light" (14), which reinforces the idea that her simplicity distracts him from conflict. He then creates the image of "[her] silhouette over [him]" (15), which shows the woman in the light, and the man covered by her shadow. Light can be warm and comforting, but can also be blinding. Her being in the light shows that she is who he loves, and his love for her blinds him. Due to his amount of love for her, he is unable, or chooses not to see, outside conflict. This blinding light reappears in the song later when he calls the woman "Lumiere" (27), a french word for light. The french language is knkown for being elegant, but the word light itself is bright and bold. His love, both elegant and blinding is mirrored by the word "Lumiere". To describe the couple and their surroundings, Ed uses the words "surrounded" (5) and "too much" (6), but these words are juxtaposed with the words "fade out" (19) and "disappear" (20). At first, he recognizes the conflict around him, but when he sees the woman, it goes away. The diction shows, once again, the blinding effect of his love.

  2. 2TOP RATED

    #2 top rated interpretation:
    anonymous
    click a star to vote
    Sep 24th 2015 !⃝

    This song is showing that Ed Sheeran loves this woman and that his love for her makes him feel that nothing else matters but her. However at the last few lines he describes her in a past tense and sais "In the moment I knew you were Beth." This shows that she might have changed, or sadly passed away, but he is obviously saying "Was" and "Were" as if something's changed.

  3. anonymous
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    Jul 3rd 2021 !⃝

    This song makes me cry cause it was gonna be my moms wedding song and this was her favourite album to listen to me and her listend to it all the time. After i turend eight she got sick and was in the hospital for a long time then they were gonna send her home but she stayed and then she had a surgery i dont remmber what it was and they didnt put her on a monator she has a bunch of health problems one of them being dieabeites long story short her heart stoped for god knows how long was in a comma then died on december 6 th my birthday was november 27 th im now 14 and this song reminds me of her i miss her alot. Anyways this is a beautiful song i love your music ed stay safe love you <3

  4. anonymous
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    Mar 20th 2021 !⃝

    Its 2021... I have to get this off my chest in the out to the electronic statosphere.... Tenerife Sea... Taylor Swift... yeah... the real give a way is what relates to the song they wrote toghether... in the last line of tenerife... "and in the moment i knew you BETH" Bet money that used to end as... in the moment i knew you BEST... uhhh... I just wanna know you better...just a thought... off my chest... rolling the dice.

  5. anonymous
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    Nov 12th 2019 !⃝

    I just wanted to say that some of y’all are regarded and so are your interpretations. Goodnight

  6. anonymous
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    Feb 2nd 2016 !⃝

    I think this is about Ed loving someone a lot.

    This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
  7. anonymous
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    Mar 20th 2015 !⃝

    Tenerife sea talks about a couple that are deeply in love with each other and blind to the talks of people. He describes into detail how he sees the woman he loves as the Tenerife sea. It's a beautiful love song . In a world where people could easily ruin a beautiful thing such as the love being shared by the couple but due to what they mean to each other everyone and everything else is just background

  8. anonymous
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    Sep 30th 2014 !⃝

    (T)enerife (S)ea
    (T)aylor (S)wift
    tenerife sea is about a boy who is madly in love and describes all the ways she is beautiful and this song is life


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