Between “You’re Losing Me” and all those rumors about The Tortured Poets Department, fans have suspected that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn’s invisible string was fraying well before the end of their six-year relationship in 2023—and Swift’s latest Era’s Tour speech won’t change that.
During her latest concert in Melbourne, Swift revealed she felt “lonely” while writing Folklore—a pandemic album that included multiple collaborations with her then-boyfriend. “[I was] imagining that, instead of being a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine, I was a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder, and I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill,” she said, per fan-recorded video.
She continued, “That was in my mind, what I thought I looked like writing Folklore. That is not what I looked like…So that’s all that matters—the delusion.”
TikTok content
This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.
Swift and Alwyn dated for six years before news of their split went public in April 2023. During their relationship, Alwyn co-wrote multiple tracks on the sister albums Folklore and Evermore under the pen name William Bowery, including Folklore’s “betty” and “exile.”
“Joe and I really love sad songs,” Swift told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in December 2020. “We’ve always bonded over music. We write the saddest [songs]. We just really love sad songs. What can I say? It was a surprise that we started writing together but in a way it wasn’t, because we have always bonded over music and had the same musical tastes.”
Initial reports following their split suggested Alwyn “struggled” with Swift’s level of fame when she reemerged from her self-imposed exile to prepare for the Eras Tour. “They had plenty in common and fell in love in a safe bubble while she was retreating from the world during Reputation,” a source told People in April 2023. “Then the pandemic hit, and they were locked down together and able to continue growing their relationship in this insulated way. But he didn’t really ‘know’ her yet outside of that bubble.”
However, fans later became convinced “You’re Losing Me,” a Midnights bonus track written with Jack Antonoff over a bottle of Gaslighter Rosé in December 2021, marked the true beginning of the end for the couple. And if sleuths are right the alleged Joe Alwyn easter eggs in The Tortured Poets Department track list and album, we may learn a whole lot more on April 19.
