Songfacts®:

• Feet are three feet off the ground
  Lost in love and we don't wanna be found
  It's just you and me
  My English girl in an American town
  
  Ed Sheeran and his wife Cherry Seaborn were classmates at Thomas Mills High School in Framlingham, Suffolk. They reconnected and fell in love while Sheeran was performing in the US, where she was living at the time. "American Town" finds Sheeran reflecting on the feelings of excitement and infatuation in those early days of their courtship.
• Sheeran recorded "American Town" for Autumn Variations, his first record to evoke the feeling of a specific season. It was inspired in part by the warm and intimate moments he experienced at home with Cherry and their two daughters.
  
  "Me and Cherry cook a lot and we always put on the same sort of records, Norah Jones' Come Away With Me or Jack Johnson's In Between Dreams," Sheeran said in an interview with CBS Mornings. "That was very much wanting to go in and create an autumnal feeling or 14 stories about my friends."
• Just before he released Autumn Variations, Ed Sheeran performed a snippet of "American Town" for Friends actress Courtney Cox, the partner of the English star's close friend and frequent collaborator, Johnny McDaid. Once Sheeran finished sing-rapping his snippet, Cox asked:
  
  "Wait, that was really about the show Friends?"
  
  "Well, inspired by it," he replied.
• Autumn Variations was solely produced by Aaron Dessner of the band the National, except for the track "Spring," which he co-produced with his twin brother and band colleague Bryce. "I was always like, 'I don't have a record like this, that's just one producer, one mood, one feel,'" said Sheeran of Autumn Variations in an interview with CBS Mornings.
• Aaron Dessner also produced Sheeran's previous album, Subtract, and collaborated with Taylor Swift on Folklore and Evermore.