Let’s spiral, shall we?
Ever since Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn got together in 2017, they’ve kept their relationship extremely private. Even so, Swift — always the romantic — hasn’t been able to stop herself from sharing a few details of their sweet relationship.
In her 2019 album Lover, Swift made her feelings toward Alwyn crystal clear. In her own words, “I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover / My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue / All's well that ends well to end up with you.” (Cue the “Are they secretly married?” rumors.)
During an August 2019 interview with The Guardian, Swift explained why she and Alwyn were so determined to keep things private. "I've learned that if I do [talk about it], people think it's up for discussion, and our relationship isn't up for discussion,” she told the outlet.
“If you and I were having a glass of wine right now, we'd be talking about it — but it's just that it goes out into the world,” Swift continued. “That's where the boundary is, and that's where my life has become manageable. I really want to keep it feeling manageable.”
Alwyn has said something similar. Per People, during an interview with Total Film in September 2018, the Conversations With Friends actor said, “For me, I just don't feel it's something I want to offer up to be picked apart by people who don't know about it, and it's just not theirs to have.”
When Miss Americana came out on Netflix in January 2020, fans saw more of Swift and Alwyn’s relationship. At one point, the singer mouthed the words “I love you” to her beau while playing guitar. (Cute!) Plus, their sweet backstage hug was everything.
That wasn’t all Swift said about Alwyn in the documentary. Per Insider, she also shared, “I also was falling in love with someone who had a really wonderfully normal, balanced, grounded life, and we decided together that we wanted our relationship to be private.”
In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Swift spoke to Paul McCartney about her relationship. “In knowing him and being in the relationship I am in now, I have definitely made decisions that have made my life feel more like a real life and less like just a storyline to be commented on in tabloids,” Swift said.
The “Call It What You Want” singer continued, explaining how her relationship with Alwyn affects all aspects of her life. "Whether that's deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture — the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it's really just trying to find bits of normalcy,” Swift said.
During quarantine, Swift and Alwyn bonded over music — and he even co-wrote some songs on Folklore and Evermore. In Folklore: The Long Pond Studio Sessions, Swift admitted, “There's been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity because it’s not a real person. William Bowery is Joe, as we know.”
Per Swift, they didn’t plan to write together — it just kind of happened. “I just heard Joe singing the entire full-formed chorus of 'Betty' from another room. And I was just like, ‘Hello,’” she explained in the film. “He was singing the chorus of it and I thought it sounded really good from a man’s voice, from a masculine perspective, and I really liked that it seemed to be an apology.”
It looks like Swift’s Midnights will also be Alwyn-influenced. She’s already said that the song “Lavender Haze” is inspired by their relationship. “If the world finds out that you're in love with somebody, they're gonna weigh in on it,” she explained on Instagram.
“Like my relationship for six years, we've had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it,” Swift added. “And so this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”
“Snow On The Beach,” Swift’s collab with Lana Del Ray, also sounds like a love song. “The song is about falling in love with someone at the same time as they’re falling in love with you, sort of in this sort of cataclysmic, fated moment where you realize someone feels exactly the same way that you feel,” she explained on IG.