Elton John has written three songs with Ed Sheeran – including another Christmas song

Elton John has revealed that he and Ed Sheeran have written three songs together, including an as-yet unreleased Christmas song.

This follows the release of their first festive collaboration ‘Merry Christmas’, which came out last week and is vying for this year’s Christmas Number One spot.

Sheeran shared the news about ‘Merry Christmas’ with Dutch radio station NPO Radio back in October. Asked about it during his NME Big Read interview last month, Sir Elton joked: “Yeah, he’s let the cat out of the bag didn’t he! I was sworn to secrecy and then big mouth fucking Sheeran goes to the Netherlands! It’s supposed to come out – we haven’t finished it yet, so there’s still work to be done.”

He added: “I can’t say any more than that because it’s in his hands… I spoke him this morning – he’s in Sweden and he’s going in the studio to try and finish it off.”

NME can now reveal that Elton also explained it wasn’t the only song he and Sheeran had worked on. “We actually wrote three songs, so I don’t know what’s happening to all three,” he told us.

Asked about the remaining two songs, he replied: “The other two songs are really good, too, and they’re all different. One’s called ‘Pull My Christmas Cracker’, which of course if my favourite because I like to pull a Christmas cracker… But again, it’s up to him – he’s running the campaign, and I’m not.”

Today it was announced that Sir Elton and Sheeran have also teamed up with novelty act LadBaby for the charity single ‘Sausage Rolls For Everyone’. Ladbaby – comprised of YouTuber Mark Hoyle and his wife Roxanne – have topped the festive charts on three consecutive years with ‘We Built This City’ (2018), ‘I Love Sausage Rolls’ (2019) and ‘Don’t Stop Me Eatin’’ (2020), donating the proceeds to food bank charity the Trussell Trust.

In his Big Read interview, Elton jokingly described LadBaby as his and Ed’s competition for Christmas Number One: “We’ve got the sausage roll man to deal with, haven’t we? We’ve got LadBaby to deal with! Once we bump him off, we might have a clear path to a hit record. He seems to have the monopoly on Christmas records. And good for him!”

In a three-star review, NME described ‘Merry Christmas’ as “a nice, safe, mid-paced sleigh ride through lyrics simple enough for your young relatives to recite, and sleepy enough to ensure your Nan doesn’t spill her eggnog.”

You can find out more about the upcoming collaborations when Ed appears on Elton’s Rocket Hour radio show on Apple Music 1 at 5pm GMT tomorrow (December 11).