Ed Sheeran On His Christmas Song With Elton John
Ed Sheeran has spoken about writing a Christmas song with Elton John and “almost killing” the veteran singer on the video shoot in a new interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1.
Sheeran discussed how the collaboration first came about: “When Elton rang me and said, ‘Let’s do a Christmas song.’ I was like, ‘There’s no point doing a Christmas song, because there are so many great ones out there. If we’re going to do it, we have to chuck the kitchen sink at it and it has to tick every single box. It has to be sleigh bells… It has to be ding-dong church bells, it has to be mistletoe, dancing and wine.’ I’ve never actually thought of making a Christmas song. It’s always been the type of thing that I thought I’d do when I was 60. My manager Stuart said he’d retire if I ever made a Christmas album… to be honest, if it wasn’t with Elton, I wouldn’t be doing it. I’ve always wanted to work with him and this made the most sense.”
Sheerran went on to talk about narrowly avoiding an acciden ton the set of the video: “I almost killed him with a bell… I’m dressed up as sort of sexy Santa Claus and I kick a present, but the present had a big metal bell on top of it. I showed him the footage of it today, because we slowed it down and the bell flew past his head and would’ve cracked him in the head. I’ll post it. David, Elton’s partner said that you should post that. So, I will post it eventually, but it was one of these things, I had the video, I was like, ‘I got to show him this.’ But, man, the music video is wild. We’ve parodied all the great British music videos that came at Christmas.”