Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn Stayed Out of the Spotlight. Her New Album Illuminates Some Things
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Taylor Swift’s 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department, is finally here (Swifties, rejoice!). Released Friday—along with 15 bonus songs forming The Anthology collection—the double album revisits her breakup with former boyfriend and British actor Joe Alwyn. Swift has since moved on with NFL player Travis Kelce, but fans have been busy decoding all that the pop megastar has to share about her previous relationship.
Swift was first linked with Alwyn in October 2016. The couple dated for more than six years and even became songwriting partners. They kept almost all the details about their romance hidden from the public before breaking up by April 2023. Here’s what you need to know about Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn’s relationship, from the beginning to end.
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Swift and Alwyn kept it low-key from the start
Before dating Alwyn, Swift was in a relationship with another Brit, actor Tom Hiddleston. They dated briefly before calling it quits in September 2016.
The exact date of when Swift and Alwyn met has never been confirmed, but it’s speculated that they were introduced at the Met Gala in May 2016. Swift might have written about their meeting in her song “Dress” from her 2017 album, reputation: “Flashback to when you met me / Your buzz cut / And my hair bleached.”
Shortly after her breakup with Hiddleston, Swift and Alwyn were both spotted attending a Kings of Leon concert in New York City that October. The next month, she went to a screening of Alwyn’s movie Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk.
Swift alluded to their romance in a journal entry from January 2017, early in their relationship, that she shared in the deluxe edition of her 2019 album Lover. “I’m essentially based in London, hiding out trying to protect us from the nasty world that just wants to ruin things,” she wrote. “We have been together and no one has found out for 3 months now.”
Rumors of their romance went public in 2017
Public speculation that the duo were dating began in May 2017 after The Sun published a column about the then-secret relationship. Paparazzi caught the couple spending time together in Nashville that June and again in New York City that October. In December 2017, the couple were spotted dancing and cuddling together at an Ed Sheeran concert.
Swift apparently spilled to some of her fans in October 2017 that her song “Gorgeous” was about Alwyn. She allegedly told fans during a secret listening session for her reputation album.
However, the couple didn’t publicly acknowledge their relationship until May 2018, when they made it Instagram-official. Alwyn and Swift separately shared similar photos, posing in front of the same cactus, before the start of her Reputation Tour.
The couple was also photographed vacationing together in Turks and Caicos in July 2018.
The couple were serious but didn’t share details of their relationship
Even once the public knew they were together, the couple remained quiet about their relationship. Swift explained to The Guardian in August 2019 why she wasn’t sharing more about her beau. “I’ve learned that if I do, people think it’s up for discussion, and our relationship isn’t up for discussion,” she said.
However, Swift did briefly discuss Alwyn, though not by name, in her Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, which was released in January 2020. “I was falling in love with someone who had a wonderfully normal, balanced life,” she said, alluding to her relationship with Alwyn. “We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private. I was happy… It was happiness without anyone else’s input.”
Swift and Alwyn began living together in London’s Primrose Hill neighborhood, and rumors of the couple’s engagement constantly swirled. “If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins,” Alwyn told WSJ Magazine in April 2022. He added, “I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say.”
Alwyn eventually helped write some of Swift’s songs
Eventually, Alwyn became more than Swift’s boyfriend. He was a collaborator on some of her music, too. Their working relationship was kept under wraps for awhile with Alwyn adopting the pseudonym William Bowery. He co-wrote six songs with Swift: “Exile” and “Betty” on folklore (2020); “Champagne Problems,” “Coney Island,” and the title track from evermore (2020), and the song “Sweet Nothing” on Midnights (2022).
Swift confirmed that Joe was William Bowery in November 2020 during her Disney+ special, Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions. “There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity because it’s not a real person,” she said. “So, William Bowery is Joe, as we know. He plays piano beautifully, and he’s always just playing and making things up and kind of creating things.”
In December 2020, Swift gave a further peek into their musical tastes to Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. “Joe and I really love sad songs. We’ve always bonded over music,” she said. “We write the saddest songs. We just really love sad songs. What can I say?”
When Swift won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2021 for folklore, she gave her boyfriend a shout out in her acceptance speech. “Joe is the first person that I play every single song that I write, and I had the best time writing songs with you in quarantine,” she said.
Alwyn agreed, later telling The Guardian: “That was a surreal bonus of lockdown. That’s an understatement. It wasn’t like, ‘It’s five o’clock, it’s time to try and write a song together.’ It came about from messing around on a piano and singing badly, then being overheard and being, like, ‘Let’s see what happens if we get to the end of it together.’”
Their breakup was unexpected
News of the couple’s breakup was confirmed in April 2023 while Swift was in the early months of her record-breaking Eras Tour. Given the secrecy they had maintained while together, it came as a shock that they called it quits after more than six years of dating. Neither Swift nor Alwyn has publicly addressed their breakup.
According to People’s reporting, the cause of the breakup was ultimately that they “weren’t the right fit for one another.” A source told the magazine, “They’ve had rough patches before and always worked things out, so friends thought they would take some time apart but eventually come back together.” One major sticking point for Alwyn seemed to be the tension between Swift’s fame and his desire to attention.
Swift acknowledged her life in the public eye has tradeoffs in a 2023 interview with Time. “Yes, if I go out to dinner, there’s going to be a whole chaotic situation outside the restaurant. But I still want to go to dinner with my friends,” she said, before adding: “Life is short. Have adventures. Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years—I’ll never get that time back. I’m more trusting now than I was six years ago.”
Swift has always been honest about her personal life through her music, and The Tortured Poets Department proves no different. The pop star mentions rings in two songs—“loml” and the title track—perhaps nodding to the fact that she and Alwyn had discussed marriage but never went through with it. “So Long, London” is also thought to reference their breakup. Given that Swift doesn’t often weigh in on the Easter eggs hidden in her songs, fans will continue to decipher and debate her latest confessionals for some time.
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