(upbeat music)

(Interviewer) So how many tattoos

Do you think you have now?

I see it as a tattoo.

Then I couldn’t count.

Yeah, people always say I look like a melted crayon.

(happy music continues)

I grew up in a home, my parents worked in art,

and was surrounded by colorful paintings.

My mom painted our room bright colors.

and I was surrounded by creative, brightly colored things.

And when I started getting tattoos,

I was like, I like the color.

The first was this small footprint.

Cristina Perri.

It was at his brother’s tattoo shop and he had no idea.

We actually ended up making music together.

and travel together in the future,

but it was his brother’s tattoo shop in 2010.

I had just turned 18 and it was legal to get a tattoo.

so I entered the store.

I drew this paw print

for about three or four years every day

with permanent marker.

And I was like,

That will be my only tattoo and I won’t get any more.

Obviously that didn’t last.

I actually bought them from Christina Perri.

He was about to play Madison Square Garden.

for three times.

My dad told me how,

If you can do it in New York,

you can do it anywhere in the world.

And it’s very important for me to come here.

and play three nights.

My grandfather was a boxer and also worked in boxing.

And Madison Square Garden is kind of synonymous with boxing.

That’s why I bought three boxing gloves.

My grandfather had also just passed away.

so it’s part and parcel of that.

(upbeat music)

This was in October 2012.

I appeared on Taylor’s Red album.

I understood it to mean that.

Actually it was before, I don’t think they had asked me.

being on The Red Tour at the time.

Maybe this clinched it, and then I went to the Red Tour.

and that was a year of my life living in the United States.

So it’s a pretty meaningful tattoo.

from that time.

(Interviewer) What did you think of the tattoo?

I actually don’t remember.

I imagine at that moment it would be like,

Why do you do that?

My favorite tattoo

my daughter drew a bunny,

and I got it tattooed.

So that’s probably my favorite right now.

just because it’s always covered.

Nobody else sees it but it’s something.

that I look at every day.

I have my children’s footprints on my back.

When they were born, we received their footprints.

and I put them in squares.

After going to Antarctica,

which is possibly the most amazing place on the planet.

It really blew my mind.

See the orcas for the first time.

when they come out of the water,

It’s really impressive.

Also, when you go to Antarctica,

You see the first penguin and you say:

Oh my god!

And then at the end you see that you are like penguins.

They’re everywhere, and it’s like,

Oh, it’s another damn penguin.

But that’s my daughter’s name, Antarctica.

I mean, they’re all kind of significant.

but in terms of the most significant,

I would say this little finger number one

for my friend Michael who passed away

and then this little SB.TV for my friend Jamal

who died.

And I wanted to have them in my hand to play the guitar.

just so they are always there,

because they had both been involved

in my career in pretty big ways.

(upbeat hiphop music)

I met Damien Rice when I was super young.

I had gone to an under-18 show.

with my cousin in Dublin.

I met him later at the bar.

He was there having a pint,

and I went up and spoke to him,

and it was before I started writing songs

Or did I really take it seriously,

And that was really the turning point of my life.

Have you seen the album cover photo?

In short, they are like two little stick drawings.

and then Damien Rice says

about the two stick drawings,

and took my album and signed it,

and then he drew me a stick

with a plane above me,

Because I had flown with my father to Ireland.

That’s essentially a drawing of me with the plane.

Basically, where my career started.

(upbeat hiphop music continues)

Something I wanted to get for a while was the lyrics,

Everything that happens is from now on.

From re: batteries.

I spoke to Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol about it.

and we were both like,

That’s our favorite letter, we should tattoo it.

And I was like,

If I ever meet him, I’ll write him down.

in his letter.

I was playing in Suffolk, which is where I live,

and I managed to get to know him,

and so I put it by hand, I tattooed it,

and Gary decided he didn’t want to do it.

But Gary doesn’t have any tattoos either.

I think I’m a little freer with my skin.

(Interviewer) I also heard you have a matching tattoo.

with Harry Styles.

Yeah, I think it’s tattooed over it.

It wasn’t so much a coincidence.

I have the little penguin Pingu and he wrote Pingu,

but I think he has covered it with an anchor,

which obviously looks a little cooler. (laughs)

(intense hiphop music)

I was doing the Galway Girl video with Saoirse Ronan.

and she tattooed me in the video, and I told her,

It would be funny if we misspelled Galway Grill.

I think I said in an interview that I had written it wrong.

and then it turned out that he had written it wrong,

but we had planned it.

So, she actually tattooed me.

I don’t think he’s gotten a tattoo since.

I think this is Saoirser’s tattoo.

I’m a big fan of the TV show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

and I was making this manga and getting tattoos

in important places where he traveled.

So I bought, you know, Heinz ketchup in Pittsburgh.

and the koala in Australia.

I thought: What do I get for Philadelphia?

And I have Prince.

(slow hiphop music)

He was on tour with Brixton, his four boys,

And we were on tour, and in Britain,

there is like a phrase about when you are going to drink

with the boys, your boys on tour.

And I was like, Oh, we’re touring guys.

We should tattoo the guys on tour.

Yes, it is as basic as possible, but yes.

(slow music)

I was playing at Wembley Stadium.

Wembley Stadium is the largest stadium.

that we have in the UK.

I didn’t know I would ever play in a stadium.

I didn’t even think I’d be playing arenas.

I thought he was a theater artist.

And in 2015, for the first time, I sold out three Wembleys.

Wembley is the birthplace of English football.

The shield of English football is three lions.

So I wanted to have something related to that.

I still think it is the greatest achievement of my life,

playing at Wembley Stadium.

So I got adding, multiplying, dividing and subtracting.

tattooed around my wrist.

I had the 2010 math plan.

In my head, that was the albums plan.

What was I going to do?

Add, Multiply, Divide and Subtract.

The same ones entered a little later.

But the following symbols have been on my arm for 13 years.

too, and I’ll start that series next year.

I guess it’s kind of a prison break on my part, right?

Clues.

The most painful tattoo by far was the Holy Family tattoo.

Eight hours of, you know,

They make the tattoo needle with like 20 needles

and it’s barely crawling.

It was gloomy.

Like, gloomy.

I think tattoos hurt more the more you get them.

Like the first one.

I remember receiving this and saying:

Oh, that wasn’t so bad.

And I feel like the older I get,

Maybe it’s just because I’m getting older,

but someone said it’s the more you tattoo

what your body is saying,

Please stop doing this.

And the more you understand it, the more it says:

Please stop doing this.