Ed Sheeran Says He Has Long Conversations with Pal Taylor Swift That Feel Like 'Therapy' (Exclusive)

"She's one of the only people that actually truly understands where I'm at," Sheeran tells Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 of Swift

Ed Sheeran is thankful to have someone like Taylor Swift — a longtime friend and collaborator who comprehends where he's at — in his life.

In an exclusive clip shared with PEOPLE from Sheeran's interview with Zane Lowe's Apple Music 1, the "Shivers" singer opens up about how Swift has pushed him in his career.

"I have long, long, long conversations with Taylor about stuff just because I feel like she's one of the only people that actually truly understands where I'm at," Sheeran, 32, tells Lowe.

Sheeran — who has spent the past week and a half in the courtroom as he fights a copyright lawsuit — also provided more insight into their friendship.

"I had an hour-20 conversation with her yesterday and we were just — everything that was on our minds we talked about," he says of Swift, 32. "I mean that in itself is kind of therapy as well, because you're actually talking to someone that genuinely gets it."

He continues, "That has all the things that you feel and have insecurities about and how other people treat you or how your family treat you, how your friends treat you. She's basically in the same sphere."

Related:Ed Sheeran Salutes Taylor Swift to Introducing Him to Mutual Collaborator Aaron Dessner: 'You Rock'

The "Bad Habits" singer and the Midnights songstress work with now-mutual collaborator Aaron Dessner, who notably worked with her on albums folklore and evermore. He spoke up about how he came to work with Dessner.

"I'm always — not guarded, but I kind of would keep my distance if there would be a collaborator that she'd be working with closely just because that's her thing. And I don't want to be like, 'Well going to do that too,'" he says.

"But she was like, 'I think it'd be really important for you as an artist to do what I did and work with Aaron because this is what it did for me. And I think you and Aaron should work together.' So that sort of opened the door to it. And I am incredibly grateful. I'm making some of the most meaningful music to me that I've made in a very long time."

The full episode will air at 1 p.m. ET on Apple Music 1 on Wednesday.

Sheeran and Swift go way back, meeting in 2012 and eventually collaborating on Red's "Everything Has Changed." In 2017, the pair linked up on Swift's "End Game" alongside Future, and he even costarred in the music video at the time.

After re-recording their duet for Red (Taylor's Version) and sharing the previously unreleased song "Run" on the album, Sheeran released "The Joker and the Queen" alongside Swift in 2022. Sheeran even enlisted the same child actors who starred in their 2013 "Everything Has Changed" music video, making the collaboration a full circle moment.

But now, the two are sharing mutual collaborators these days, as Sheeran preps his latest release.

"I had been working on Subtract for 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.

The album, set to be released on Friday, 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 is Subtract."

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