Taylor Swift Was ‘Lonely’ While Writing Folklore
Evidence that Taylor Swift’s upcoming album might just be a compilation of Joe Alwyn diss tracks is piling up. While performing an Eras Tour show in Melbourne on Saturday, Swift noted that she was “lonely” while writing Folklore — her 2020 woodsy pixie album that she conjured up and released during quarantine. And which member of the “Tortured Man Club” was she dating at the time? I can tell you with certainty it wasn’t Paul Mescal or Andrew Scott. (Surprise: It was poor, sweet Joe Alwyn.)
“[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,” Swift said onstage. “That was in my mind, what I thought I looked like writing ‘Folklore.’”
“That is not what I looked like,” she added. “So that’s all that matters — the delusion.”
To give Swift’s most recent ex-boyfriend the benefit of the doubt for a moment, the singer may have intended to invoke a general image of loneliness attributed to the pandemic or womanhood or singledom in her 30s. But it’s difficult to skip over the fact that the two had been dating for nearly four years by the time she embarked on her Folklore era. Alwyn reportedly co-wrote some of the album’s tracks, too. And while the former couple didn’t go through a blowout of a breakup, it’s not far-fetched to imagine that Swift might have been feeling pangs of loneliness while in a relationship with a man she already knew wasn’t her person.
Until we get Swift’s 11th studio album The Tortured Poets Department in April, we’ll just have to speculate what songs like “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” might possibly be about — my condolences to the subject who inspired them. In the meantime, we can rest easy knowing Swift is the opposite of “lonely” with her football guy Travis Kelce. Or, at least that’s what it looks like!
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