Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.Photo: Anna Webber/Getty
Ed Sheeranis giving credit where credit is due.
On Thursday, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter, 32, thanked his longtime collaboratorTaylor Swifton Instagram for her help with his next album.
While there’s no signs pointing to Swift, 33, being featured on-(pronouncedSubtract), shedidconnect Sheeran with their now-mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who notably worked with her on albumsfolkloreandevermore.
“So in 2021, I got a message from@taylorswiftto link me up with@aarondessner. She thought he and I would make something great together,” Sheeran revealed in an Instagram caption. “I have to be honest I was a bit reticent to work with him that soon after folklore and evermore because I felt that was Taylors thing and they had both been done so perfectly. But we met for dinner, chatted about life and music, and he promised to send me some instrumentals for me to write over whenever inspiration hit.”
The National’s Dessner, 46, earned an album of the year Grammy win with Swift for their work onfolklorein 2021, and he’s since formed a creative bond with Sheeran, too. As the musician writes, Dessner provided him with some instrumentals that he “loved the whole overall vibe of,” but didn’t feel they matched up with what his new album was set to be, at least at the time.
“Thanks to Aaron and Jon for the insane amount of hard work and dedication you put into this project, and bringing out a side of me I had put on mute for so long,” he continued. “And of course, thanks to Swizzle, as always, you rock x”
Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift.Christopher Polk/Getty
Sheeran and Swift go way back, meeting in 2012 andeventually collaboratingonRed’s “Everything Has Changed.” In 2017, the pair linked up on Swift’s “End Game” alongside Future, and Ed evencostarred in the music videoat the time.
After re-recording their duet for Red (Taylor’s Version) and sharing thepreviously unreleased song “Run” on the album, Sheeran released “The Joker and the Queen” alongside Swift in 2022. Sheeran even enlistedthe same child actorswho starred in their 2013 “Everything Has Changed” music video, making the collaboration a full circle moment.
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But now, the two are sharing mutual collaborators these days, asSheeran preps his latest release.
“I had been working onSubtractfor a decade, trying to sculpt the perfect acoustic album, writing and recording hundreds of songs with a clear vision of what I thought it should be. Then at the start of 2022, a series of events changed my life, my mental health, and ultimately the way I viewed music and art,” Sheeran said in an Instagram announcement this week.
“Writing songs is my therapy. It helps me make sense of my feelings. I wrote without thought of what the songs would be, I just wrote whatever tumbled out. And in just over a week, I replaced a decade’s worth of work with my deepest darkest thoughts.
“Within the space of a month, my pregnant wife got told she had a tumour, with no route to treatment until after the birth,” he continued ofwife Cherry Seaborn, whom hewelcomed a second daughterwith in May of last year.
The album, set to release on May 5, is “opening the trapdoor into my soul,” he revealed.
“For the first time I’m not trying to craft an album people will like, I’m merely putting something out that’s honest and true to where I am in my adult life,” he said. “This is last February’s diary entry and my way of making sense of it. This isSubtract.”
source: people.com
