Ishawna, Ed Sheeran Share Music Video For ‘Brace It’

Brace It – the surprise Dancehall-Pop collaboration between Ishawna and Ed Sheeran – has finally gotten the music video treatment nearly a year after its release.

Premiering yesterday, May 23, the Filmheads Studios-directed music video plays up the long-distance trope between Ishawna and Sheeran, creating a simple yet visually stunning piece anchored by a mix of the archaic – phone booths, old-school tape recorders and a box TV – and the modern.

Both singers take turns expressing their longing via their weirdly isolated payphone booths, while a couple – unrestrained by the distance hindering Sheeran and Ishawna’s desires – makes full use of being in a room together as the song plays. 

In the video, the couple provides the meeting point for the singers’ desires, while the singers themselves carry the tension of being physically apart. Both dynamics are effectively paced, leading to reasonable portrayal of the song’s themes of the interplay between lust, anticipation and, ultimately, climax.

Brace It was released on June 24, 2022, under Ishawna’s Legendary Records, and was produced by herself, Cordel ‘Skatta’ Burrell and Donavan ‘Don Corleon’ Bennett. 

Ishawna first teased the song back in 2021 following news that Sheeran had been gushing about her remix of his hit single, Shape Of You. 

Sheeran had told Qmusic Nederland host, Domien Verschuuren: “What I like about Shape of You is that anywhere I go in the world, people know that song and there’s so many remixes of it… I was in the Caribbean and I heard, like, a totally different song.”

He further explained: “It’s really, really filthy, but she’s just singing about her man going down on her, but it was all over the Caribbean. I’ve listened to it so many times… Even when she says, ‘If you want head, my yute yuh haffi suck this’, it’s so good.”

Then, in an interview on the Halfcast Podcast, Sheeran spilled the beans that the two had been working together – which Ishawna referenced in her subsequent announcement of that project.

According to Sheeran: “Ishawna’s got me singing Patois with her.  I was like ‘I don’t know’ and she was like ‘trust me.  Kingston slang; they’re gonna f@#kin love it’

Following those series of events, Ishawna excitedly took to her social media pages to echo Ed’s comments, telling her fans: “I was trying soooo hard to keep this a secret but since Ed Sheeran has let the cat out of the bag, it’s only right I share the good news!!!!😩😆😭😁🙌🏽 It’s official guys!!! Ed Sheeran & Ishawna collab coming soon🎶🔥🔥🔥.”

Brace It currently has 6.9 million streams on Spotify, and is Ishawna’s most popular song on the platform, followed by the song that inspired it all – Equal Rights, which has over 1.2 million.

Just a day after its release, its music video is fast approaching 80 thousand views.