Written by Trending on Billboard
Ed Sheeran may love to use a loop pedal on stage, but in life, he’s often out of the loop due to his refusal to own a phone. That’s why he found out about longtime bestie Taylor Swift‘s engagement to Travis Kelce weeks after the fact.
But after learning about the “Fate of Ophelia” singer’s big news at the same time as the rest of the world via her August announcement on Instagram, the British pop star apparently had a long conversation with Swift to get caught up to speed. Revealing that he met up with her just “a week after” he revealed to Andy Cohen in September that he’d not been privy to Swift’s engagement before the general public, Sheeran told Access Hollywood in a Nov. 28 interview, “When I saw Taylor, we had like a four-hour catch-up.”
“I’m not self-conscious about my relationship with her,” he continued, noting that he and his pal spent the time talking about “life stuff” together. “We’ve been friends for many years. We’re super close, and we see each other when we see each other. And when we see each other, we lock back into where we left off,” Sheeran added.
The two titans of pop music have indeed been close for a long time, with the pair coming together in 2012 for a collaboration on Swift’s Red album titled “Everything Has Changed.” Sheeran then joined the 14-time Grammy winner on the road for her Red Tour, and the two have teamed up on a number of tracks since.
Despite their bond, Swift forgot to tell Sheeran directly about her engagement because of his commitment to staying off the grid. “He doesn’t have a phone,” the Eras Tour headliner lamented to Jimmy Fallon in October. “And this is one thing I love about him … But when I’m going through, saying, ‘Hey, who should we call? Who should we FaceTime?’ I’m going through my texts and being like, ‘Who have I texted within the last like, month of my life?’”
But while he may have been late to the proposal news, Sheeran will definitely be at Swift’s nuptials to the Kansas City Chiefs tight end (that is, assuming the happy couple sends him an invite with the date and location by post rather than text or email). On U.K.’s Hits Radio Breakfast Show in October, Swift confirmed that Sheeran will be on the guest list and added that it will be “hard to keep” him from giving an impromptu performance at the reception.
“It’s like, Ed, if there’s a stage you know that you’ll be on it,” she said at the time. “He knows what people want, and he wants to give people what they want.”
Watch Sheeran discuss his recent catch-up with Swift below.
