The song is all about finding my old phone,” Ed Sheeran says of his latest single, “Old Phone,” in the new music video for it. “I was finding text messages from people that aren’t even here anymore, and reading conversations with people that I wish that I could have conversations with now. So, I thought I’d build a pub somewhere and do a gig, but I put it out there to my fans and said ‘If you want to come to this gig, go on your old phone and find a message that means a lot to you, or a video that means a lot to you.”
The music video is that vision realized, a documentary-style short directed by Emil Nava that tracks the pub being built in Ipswich, Massachusetts. A large crowd convenes around it and Sheeran. He hands out handshakes, gives high-fives hanging out of an SUV, and takes photos with fans before the pub is opened. He performs outside it, the camera zooming in on people recording the show with their new phones, and then, later, a more intimate crowd watches projections of the images they submitted on a wall outside. An older woman describes her video of her four-year-old and preteen daughters playing in the street. “They are two of five, two are on this side of heaven, the other three are on the other side,” she says.