Edward Christopher Sheeran, MBE (born 17 February 1991) is an English singer-songwriter. In early 2011, Sheeran independently released the extended play, No. 5 Collaborations Project. After signing with Asylum Records, his debut album, + (pronounced "plus"), was released in September 2011. It topped the UK and Australian charts, reached number five in the US, and has since been certified eight-times platinum in the UK.
The album contains the single "The A Team", which earned him the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically. In 2012, Sheeran won the Brit Awards for Best British Male Solo Artist and British Breakthrough Act. "The A Team" was nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, where he performed the song with Elton John.
Taylor Alison Swift is an American singer-songwriter. She is known for narrative songs about her personal life, which have received widespread media coverage. At age 14, Swift became the youngest artist signed by the Sony/ATV Music publishing house and, at 15, she signed her first record deal.
Her 2006 eponymous debut album was the longest-charting album of the 2000s in the US. Its third single, "Our Song", made her the youngest person to single-handedly write and perform a number-one song on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Swift's second album, Fearless, was released in 2008.
Buoyed by the pop crossover success of the singles "Love Story" and "You Belong with Me", it became the US' best-selling album of 2009 and was certified diamond in the US. The album won four Grammy Awards, and Swift became the youngest Album of the Year winner.
Aaron Dessner, Taylor Swift Co-Producer and Member of the National, on Navigating Both Sides of the Mixing Board
variety.comChris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic The latest episode of Variety‘s “Strictly Business” podcast features Aaron Dessner — the man Swifties are indebted to for collaborating on big chunks of “Folklore” and “Evermore,” but who more than earned his keep for a quarter-century prior to that as a member of the exalted-in-their-own-right band the National.
Dessner’s Grammy-winning group has been one of the mainstays of rock ’n roll since the late ’90s. But when most musicians were taking a time-out early in the pandemic, Dessner got called in by Taylor Swift to help create her perception-changing “Folklore” album, soon followed that same year by “Evermore.” Ever since, he’s been one of the most sought-after producer/co-writers in the business — even as the National has gotten busier with the resumption of touring, and two albums of their own in 2023.
His production efforts just this year have included two new albums with superstar Ed Sheeran, and a breakthrough album with up-and-comer Gracie Abrams that led to her getting a best new artist Grammy nomination.
How does Dessner juggle these demanding roles? Partly by working with artists in his own home-adjacent studio (the name of which, Long Pond, has become famous in its own right, due to be the setting for a Swift special).
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