Veteran UK band James are still scoring new career highs.
After achieving their first No.1 studio album last year, the band fronted by Tim Booth have now secured a key Christmas sync on the festive advertising campaign for Waitrose.
Titled The Perfect Gift, the romantic comedy short stars Keira Knightley and comedian Joe Wilkinson. The campaign film premiered on YouTube and will be supported by shorter movie-style trailers teasing the longer film across all stations.
James soundtrack the commercial with their 1997 Top 10 hit, She’s A Star, along with their orchestral version of the same track, released in 2023. According to the retailer’s announcement, the track "amplifies the empowering and uplifting feelings of the campaign; and nods to Keira Knightley, playing herself, as one of Britain's biggest stars”.
The short film was created by Wonderhood Studios and directed by Molly Manners, who directed the Netflix romcom One Day.
She’s A Star, released originally by Fontana (now part of Island EMI’s repertoire), has consumption of 336,411 units, according to the Official Charts Company. It has been amassing around 3.5 million streams in the UK a year, though can expect a boost following the release of the advert.
Universal Music Group UK’s creative and commercial partnerships division, Globe, was involved in the sync placement for She’s A Star, as was Virgin Music Group who distributed the orchestral version.
Music supervision company Native Music pitched and cleared the track for use on the Waitrose ad.
“She’s A Star was an idea we had very early on, as it ticked so many boxes," said Fred Ashworth, music supervisor at Native. "A proper British '90s classic, with the perfect tone and sentiment for the story. When we tested it against the visuals it worked equally well over the montage sequence as it did the shorter, trailer style cutdowns. The fact there is also a beautiful orchestral version, full of Christmas feels, that we could use for the final scene was the real icing on the cake.”
"We wanted a track that was synonymous with that golden era of British rom coms of the late '90s, early noughties," said Jack Croft, ECD at Wonderhood Studios. "Though the James track isn’t one of the biggest hits of that era, that iconic guitar sound and the memorable 'She’s a staaaar’ lyric is lodged at the back of everyone’s minds. We love the way it whips the audience off their feet and makes us all fall head over heels for Keira and Joe."
The song is credited to co-writers Tim Booth, Jim Glennie and Larry Gott, who left the band in 2015. It is published by Kobalt. The band are managed by Neil Hughes at Tileyard Music.
James release Nothing But Love: The Definitive Best Of on November 21 via UMR and tour UK arenas in March 2026.
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