Ed Sheeran Shares Stripped-Down ‘Eyes Closed’ Video Featuring Aaron Dessner on Piano

Just days after manifesting his grief via a blue meanie in the official video for “Eyes Closed,” Ed Sheeran switched things up and dropped a moving live video for the song on Monday (March 27). In the bare-bones clip, Sheeran strums his trusty acoustic guitar inside a drab warehouse space backed by producer The National’s Aaron Dessner on upright piano.

After the first run through the song’s crying chorus Sheeran is joined by a six-piece string section, giving the song a heightened sense of gravity as he sings, “Just dancin’ with my eyes closed/ ‘Cause everywhere I look, I still see you/ And time is movin’ so slow/ And I don’t know what else that I can do/ So I’ll keep dancin’ with my/ Eye-eye-eye-eyes/ Eye-eye-eye-eyes closed/ Eye-eye-eye-eyes So I’ll keep dancin’ with my.”

“Eyes Closed” is the first single from Sheeran’s forthcoming album – (Subtract), the final collection in his mathematics-themed series records. The singer explained that the song percolated for several years, initially imagined as a break-up song before it evolved when Ed suffered a “heartbreaking loss,” which led him to revisit the track, as described in a statement accompanying the official video.

“This song is about losing someone, feeling like every time you go out and you expect to just bump into them, and everything just reminds you of them and the things you did together,” Sheeran explained. “You sorta have to take yourself out of reality sometimes to numb the pain of loss, but certain things just bring you right back into it.”

Sheeran’s forthcoming album will drop May 5 via Asylum and Atlantic Records. It’s been described as a “soul-bearing” collection, written “against a backdrop of grief and hope,” during which time he processed his good friend late Australian Mushroom Group founder Michael Gudinski’s death, his wife Cherry Seaborn‘s tumor diagnosis and the loss of his close pal Jamal Edwards.

Watch the acoustic take on “Eyes Closed” below.