Sometimes melancholy Christmas songs are the best Christmas songs and Ed Sheeran must feel that way too. His new holiday ballad, “Under the Tree,” longs for the one thing that St. Nick can’t bring him: the lover he has lost.
Ed wrote “Under the Tree” with Johnny McDaid for the upcoming animated film That Christmas, premiering on Netflix December 4. The video for the song intersperses live-action Sheeran and his costar Claudia Jessie (Bridgerton) with animation from the movie. The pair play a couple no longer together, despite Sheeran’s most pleading attempts for a rekindling. “There is nothing under the tree that I wished for/I want you to come back to me/And be like before,” he sings.
That Christmas is based on the children’s book series by Richard Curtis, who wrote the screenplay for the modern Christmas classic Love, Actually. Curtis also directed Sheeran’s video for “Under the Tree,” choosing to film the clip in Southwold in Suffolk, which evokes the movie’s fictional town of Wellington-on-Sea.
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