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Back in April, pop culture enthusiasts everywhere were caught off guard when it was announced that Taylor Swift had split from Joe Alwyn after more than six years together.
When the news first broke, a source told ET that the relationship had simply “run its course.” They added that the former couple were in "different places in their lives,” and had both realized that “they weren't completely right for one another."
Before long, speculation began to grow that the album Taylor had released in October of last year, Midnights, was actually a breakup album and chronicled the slow demise of her and Joe’s romance.
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With the added context of their split, many of the songs appear to highlight red flags in the relationship — and even suggest that Taylor and Joe had ended things in secret over the years but had always reconciled before this final breakup.
While Taylor didn’t publicly comment on this huge upheaval in her personal life, just weeks after the news broke, she released a brand new song that appeared to shed some light on what had happened between her and Joe.
On May 24, Taylor announced that a special edition CD of Midnights would be available to buy at the East Rutherford dates of her Eras Tour three days later, and that it would include a “never before heard” vault track called “You’re Losing Me.”
The heartbreaking song immediately struck a chord with fans, with it literally starting with Taylor sighing deeply into the microphone before singing: “You say, ‘I don’t understand’ and I say, ‘I know you don’t.’”
The rest of the song follows a similar theme, with it being told from the point of view of somebody who is desperate for their partner to fight for their relationship — only to be left feeling like an “imposition.”
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Taylor sings about sitting in the dark and wondering “if it’s time” to “throw out everything” they’d built together, adding “my heart won’t start anymore for you / ‘cause you’re losing me.”
The second verse is even more gut-wrenching, with Taylor recalling: “Every morning I glared at you with storms in my eyes / How can you say that you love someone you can’t tell is dying?”
“My face was gray, but you wouldn't admit that we were sick,” she adds, before acknowledging that she knows her “pain is such an imposition.”
And in the bridge, Taylor goes all out. She sings: “I gave you all my best me's, my endless empathy / And all I did was bleed as I tried to be the bravest soldier / Fighting in only your army / Frontlines, don't you ignore me.”
The star then defeatedly admits “I wouldn’t marry me either,” before begging her partner: “Do something, babe, say something / Lose something, babe, risk something / Choose something, babe, I’ve got nothing to believe unless you’re choosing me.”
Of course it didn't take fans long to put two and two together and come to the conclusion that this song was written about Taylor’s recent split from Joe — especially as she’d been spotted going in and out of a New York City recording studio at the time.
However, a curveball was thrown on Wednesday after Taylor announced that she was finally making “You’re Losing Me” available to stream on Spotify, six months after its initial release.
This prompted her longtime collaborator Jack Antonoff to reflect on working on this song on his Instagram page, where he floored fans by confirming exactly when it was written — and it was long before Taylor and Joe ended things.
Sharing a candid photo of Taylor dressed comfortably while eating raisins from a kitchen counter, Jack wrote: “you’re losing me is out today. a very special track from midnights sessions that’s finally streaming! written and recorded at home on 12/5/21 right after taylor ate these raisins.”
This means that Taylor wrote the devastating lyrics to the song almost 18 months before her and Joe’s split was announced. It’s also worth noting that she and Joe were spotted together throughout 2022, which means that it isn’t the case that the breakup was simply kept a secret for that length of time.
However, many others expressed their disbelief over Jack’s claim as they questioned why he’d made a point of mentioning it in his post.
While there is no real reason to doubt Jack’s comment, Taylor is known for switching up the narrative surrounding her songs on occasion. For example, in 2013 she basically “confirmed” that her song “I Knew You Were Trouble” was about her then-recent ex Harry Styles.
When asked if she’d felt uncomfortable performing the song in front of him, she coyly replied: “Well, it’s not hard to access that emotion when the person the song is directed at is standing by the side of the stage watching.”
This caused a media frenzy that many ran with at the time, and Taylor leaned into it by casting a lookalike with an identical tattoo to her ex’s in the music video. In fact, to this day it is widely believed that this song is about Harry; however, the timeline of their relationship simply doesn’t allow for this to be true.
After all, Taylor had previously revealed that the idea for the song had come to her six months before her scheduled writing sessions, which would have been around January 2012. This was at least three months before she had even met Harry, let alone started dating him.
More recently, when Taylor released her version of her 2010 album Speak Now earlier this year, fans were convinced that the vault track “Castles Crumbling” was actually written for her 2017 album Reputation after noticing that it appears to accurately correlate with her infamous 2016 downfall amid her feud with Kim Kardashian and Kanye West.
Meanwhile, around the same time that Jack dropped the “You’re Losing Me” bombshell on his Instagram page, fans noticed that Taylor had liked a tweet that draws attention to one of the only love songs that was assumed to be about Joe on Midnights.
Alongside a photo of Paul and Linda McCartney, the tweet features a quote from Paul that reads: “i would come back from a run with a poem to share and having listened linda would say 'what a mind' though the lines may not have been supreme, she wasn't merely being kind. she meant what she said. it's going to make a man feel good, that kind of a thing."
Previously unbeknownst to many Swifties, it is this quote that Taylor appears to be referencing in her song “Sweet Nothing,” where she sings: “On the way home I wrote a poem / You say ‘what a mind’ / This happens all the time.”
The overwhelming consensus has always been that Taylor wrote this lyric after having the exchange with Joe, and amid Jack’s “You’re Losing Me” revelation, many were left wondering how Taylor had written such a romantic love song so soon after penning a heartbreak anthem about the same person.
And as the discourse grew online, eagle-eyed Swifties noticed that Taylor had recently liked the Paul McCartney quote tweet — which was first posted more than a year ago in October 2022, leaving little question over the intention behind her social media activity.
And amid all of this apparent new insight into Taylor and Joe’s relationship, Jack’s lyrics on his band Bleachers’ remix of Taylor’s song “Anti-Hero” have also resurfaced, and been interpreted as a loaded jibe at Joe.
In the remix, Jack sings: “Sometimes, I feel like everybody is an art bro lately / And I just judge them on the hill / Too hurt to hang out, talking shit about your famous baby / Pierced through the heart of '90s guilt.”
In case you didn’t know, Joe is an actor who has mostly starred in artsy indie projects and likes to keep out of the spotlight. People are now wondering if he is the “art bro” mentioned in Jack’s lyrics, while Taylor is Jack’s “famous baby.”
And while this whole mess has certainly left everybody with a lot of questions, one thing that has been all-but-confirmed is that Midnights really is the Joe Alwyn breakup album.
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