South Of The Border

Album: No. 6 Collaborations Project (2019)
Charted: 4 49
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Songfacts®:

  • Here, Ed Sheeran sings about a girl with brown eyes and caramel thighs who has caught his attention.

    Jump in that water, be free
    Come south of the border with me


    Sheeran is pleading with the Latino woman to leave the United States and go on a trip with him.
  • Sheeran is joined on the song by Camila Cabello and Cardi B, who both have Latin American heritage. Cabello responds to the English star's entreaties, proclaiming, "Suddenly, I'm glad I came." She also advances the narrative by crooning a couple of lines in Spanish. They translate as:

    Come here, I wanna dance, take my hand
    I wanna feel your body on me, you're trembling


    Cardi, meanwhile, calls out Sheeran's motives during her verse:

    You want the lips and the curves, need the whips and the furs
    And the diamonds I prefer, in my closet, his and hers
  • The song is the first released collaboration between any of the featured artists, but Cabello did work on a song with Sheeran in 2018 titled "The Boy," which had yet to see the light of day when No.6 Collaborations Project was dropped.
  • The action-packed video features Sheeran as Teddy Fingers and Cabello as The Mariposa conspiring to take down a couple of agents who robbed them. Cardi B plays herself; we see her rapping her verse despite being kidnapped and tied up. Also involved in the Jason Koenig-directed clip are model Alexis Ren as Scarlet Jones and actor/dancer Paul Karmiryan as Agent X.

    Koenig has previously worked with Sheeran on his visuals for "Shape Of You," "Perfect" and "Galway Girl."

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