Ed Sheeran & Taylor Swift - 'The Joker and the Queen' Single Review

Ed Sheeran is a singer/songwriter who began playing guitar at a young age and soon after started writing his own songs. When he was just a teenager, he moved to London to pursue his music, and his outpouring of creativity added up to hundreds of live shows. Drawing attention for his online performances, Sheeran hit No. 1 on the iTunes chart before he ever signed with a record label.

Ed Sheeran was born on February 17, 1991, in Halifax, West Yorkshire, in the United Kingdom. When he was 11, Sheeran met singer-songwriter Damien Rice backstage at one of Rice's shows, and the young musician found added inspiration. As the story goes, Rice told Sheeran to write his own music, and Sheeran set out the next day to do just that. It wasn't long before Sheeran was recording CDs and selling them, and he soon put together his first official EP, 'The Orange Room'. With that accomplishment and his abiding ambition driving him, at only 14 years of age, Sheeran headed to London for the summer. Thinking he could find gigs in the big city, Sheeran left home with his guitar and a backpack full of clothes, and his musical career took flight. Once in London, Sheeran began to get busy recording and playing the local singer/songwriter circuit and quickly released two albums. He also began opening for more established acts, such as Nizlopi, the Noisettes and Jay Sean, and released another EP in 2009, a year that found him playing more than 300 live shows.

It wasn't until 2010 that Sheeran made the leap to the next level in his career, and it came via online media, a route Sheeran had learned to use with great effectiveness. When a video he posted online got the attention of Example, a rapper, Sheeran was asked to go on the road with him as his opening act. This led to an even larger online fan base and inspiration for many more songs, which ended up filling three new EPs, all in 2010.

In 2017, Sheeran was made a member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for his services to music and charity. A few weeks later, Sheeran announced that he had celebrated another momentous occasion by getting engaged to girlfriend Cherry Seaborn just before the new year. In August 2018, he revealed that the two had secretly gotten married since then, and in August 2020, the pair welcomed their first child, daughter Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran.

On 19th August 2021, Sheeran announced that his fifth studio album would be called '=' (equals), and the album was released on 29th October.

Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran are old friends, having collaborated on Swift's 2012 song Everything Has Changed and being on tour together for that same album, 'Red'. They also collaborated on 2017's End Game from the 'Reputation' album.

I was absolutely over-the-moon when I learnt that Swift would be collaborating on Sheeran's piano ballad from his most recent album '='. The song which they collaborated on is called The Joker and the Queen, and it is absolutely beautiful.

I love both Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift; they are my favourite artists that are around at the moment. I think that they're both beyond talented, and have a unique gift for lyrics and melody.

And this collaboration is no different. The two actors in the music video (below) are the same as the two children in Everything Has Changed, which is a nice little easter egg for longtime fans. It is believable that The Joker and the Queen is a sort-of sequel to Swift's 2012 song.

The song is indeed made better by the collaboration between Swift and Sheeran, and whilst I think that The Joker and the Queen is a bit saccharine, with the two of them working together it is almost digestible.