Ed Sheeran is praising Taylor Swift‘s latest work with producer Aaron Dessner on The Tortured Poets Department and its surprise second installment, The Anthology.
“It’s great! I’ll always love the work that she does with Aaron,” Sheeran, 33, told Extra‘s Melvin Roberts in a new interview clip published via X on Friday, May 3. “It’s a very powerful album.”
The National frontman, 48, worked on 17 songs with Swift, 34, for her highly anticipated 11th studio album, including “So Long, London,” “Clara Bow,” “But Daddy I Love Him,” “loml,” “Chloe or Sam or Sophia or Marcus” and “How Did It End?” (Swift announced the release of TTPD while accepting the award for Best Pop Vocal Album for Midnights at the 66th annual Grammy Awards in February.)
“We started working on these songs over two years ago and it feels like they have kept us company and evolved in beautiful and unexpected ways through so much life lived during this process,” Dessner wrote via Instagram after the album’s release before breaking down their history together.
“It’s hard to believe Taylor and I have now recorded over 60 songs together (17 across this anthology!!) in the 4 years since we began working together on Folklore in 2020,” he continued. “I am forever grateful to Taylor for sharing her insane talents with and trusting me with her music. I believe these songs are some of the most lyrically acute, intricate, vulnerable and cathartic Taylor has ever written and I am continually astonished by her skills as a songwriter and performer.”
Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
In addition to working with Dessner on Swift’s most recent album, the 14-time Grammy Award winner’s longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff also wrote and produced the album with the duo.
“My favorite work we have made together / made in the most wild unhinged moment,” Antonoff wrote via Instagram when TTPD was released in April. “All the pain distilled in this album and all the laughter that came out of it. Will hold those days in the studio forever as the most inspiring of my life. I adore this album and the way it came together. TTPD FOREVER.”
This is far from the first time the all-star trio of musicians have worked together. Dessner and Antonoff, 40, previously collaborated with Swift on Folklore, Evermore, Fearless (Taylor’s Version), Red (Taylor’s Version) and Midnights, winning a Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2021 for Folklore.
“And @taylorswift, from 1989 to here … goddamn. You are the one who let me produce records first,” Antonoff wrote via Instagram after the ceremony. “Before you I just ‘wasn’t a producer,’ according to the herbs. I just wasn’t let in that room. Then I met you, we made ‘Out of the Woods’ and you said, ‘That’s the version’ and that changed my life right there.”
