The A Team' came from an experience I had when I did a gig at a homeless shelter," says Sheeran of the song. "I was 18 at the time and kind of quite naive. So, I was a bit taken back by some of the stories that I heard. I got home that night and I just wrote a lot of the lyrics. He heard one story about a girl used for sex and she was beat really badly, she drank, took drugs, and harmed herself, in the lyrics he says "its to cold outside for angels to fly" which means she couldn't escape the prison she had formed for herself.