John recalls calling Sheeran last year to propose the project: 'I'm so excited about this. I rang you up last Christmas and said, "You should write a Christmas record.”'
Sheeran responded:' I found the voice note from that day actually. Yeah, so Elton rung me Christmas Day and said “You should do a Christmas record.” And I was like, “I don't really know”. And I said, “Would you do another one?” He said, “Well, if I did another one, it would have to be a duet, I'm not going to do another solo.” So I said, “Oh we should do it together.” But then when we were planning it, I remember, because “=” was coming out, I was maybe 20, 22, maybe, 23. And I, midway through the year, just realised, why the f*** would we postpone anything? We're going to have a great Christmas together. We had such fun shooting the music video and it's so good. I love it so much.'
