Taylor Swift Fell In Love With Joe Alwyn Because He Didn’t Care About Her Superstardom, So He Shouldn't Be Punished For It 7 Years Later

While the two had always kept their relationship incredibly private when it came to media appearances and interviews, Taylor actually chronicled their entire romance through her music — so fans were left stunned by the breakup news that appeared to be at odds with her happy love songs. 

Neither Taylor nor Joe has ever publicly acknowledged the split, but a source told People magazine at the time that Joe had struggled with her recent return to the mainstream as a pop superstar amid her record-breaking Eras Tour, which had kicked off a month earlier.

This inspired fans to retrospectively analyze Taylor’s October 2022 album, Midnights, and its bonus 3am Edition tracks as they started to speculate that it had actually been inspired by the slow demise of the relationship. 

When Taylor first announced the album, she described it as “the stories of 13 sleepless nights scattered throughout my life,” but it was soon theorized that many of those nights were much more recent than she’d let on. 

In “Bejeweled,” Taylor reflects on actively dulling her sparkle because she has been so focused on her relationship, and vows to “reclaim” the popularity she once had. 

Which is undeniably a pretty accurate depiction of the star’s approach to 2023. 

After spending the previous six years still releasing music but largely keeping a low profile, Taylor absolutely dominated the last 12 months and became one of the most in-demand celebrities on the planet — with interest surrounding her fueled by paparazzi photos, public appearances, and her incredibly high-profile new relationship with NFL star Travis Kelce. 

In the song, Taylor makes it clear that if she is forced to choose between the glitz and glamor of celebrity life and her private relationship, she’ll be choosing the former. A similar sentiment is found in the song “Midnight Rain,” where Taylor admits to “chasing” fame over a relationship with somebody who wants to settle down. 

The song is told from the point of view of someone who is desperate for their partner to fight for their relationship, only to be left feeling like an “imposition.” It also suggests that marriage was a contentious topic in the relationship, with Taylor singing, “I wouldn’t marry me either.”

While Taylor did not explicitly state that the song was about Joe, her fans automatically assumed that he was the subject, and many were left heartbroken at the thought of their idol being made to feel so unappreciated and uncared for. 

And for a time, this was the last that Joe was in the headlines.

In November, six months after the song’s release, Jack gave an exact production date of Dec. 5, 2021 — meaning that Taylor had written the heartbreaking lyrics almost 18 months before she and Joe finally called time on their relationship. 

This sparked the beginning of an apparent reckoning for Joe, who immediately found himself put back on the target list by Taylor’s fans. 

This only intensified when Taylor made the rare decision to like a tweet that seemingly debunked a widely assumed theory that her 2022 love song “Sweet Nothing” was inspired by Joe.

Although she initially told fans that all of the songs on Midnights are “directly autobiographical,” she found a year-old tweet that suggested this particular one was actually inspired by Paul McCartney’s marriage to Linda McCartney, and her liking the tweet seemed to be a pointed message.

Days later, Taylor made several apparent references to Joe in an interview with Time magazine, where she praised her new boyfriend, Travis Kelce, for not being afraid to support and show up for her. 

Taylor made the comments when asked about the seriously public way that her romance with Travis had unfolded, saying, “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there, and we don’t care.

“The opposite of that is you have to go to an extreme amount of effort to make sure no one knows that you’re seeing someone,” she continued. “And we’re just proud of each other.”

She then alluded to her low-key lifestyle with Joe in a less-than-positive way by saying, “Me locking myself away in my house for a lot of years — I’ll never get that time back.”

Within hours of the album's announcement, people had unearthed a video from Joe’s interview with Paul Mescal in 2022, where the two men had revealed that they're in a WhatsApp group chat with fellow actor Andrew Scott that is called the “Tortured Man Club.”

All of this has left fans convinced that The Tortured Poets Department will explore Taylor and Joe’s breakup, and when the tracklist was released Monday, people began to theorize which of the songs could be about Joe. 

While some seemed to be obvious yet arguably unassuming heartbreak songs, such as “So Long, London,” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” and “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys,” other titles appear a little more pointed with the added context of the past few months.

And fans have also picked up on the apparent Little Mermaid reference in "But Daddy I Love Him," which is a quote from the movie that sees the main character literally giving up her voice for love.

Taylor appears to hint at her relationship having a negative impact on other aspects of her life in the album artwork, too, with the words “I love you, it’s ruining my life” written over her bare shoulder in a black-and-white photo of her looking forlorn.

It is, of course, impossible to say with any certainty what the songs are actually about until we hear them on April 19. It’s also worth noting that Taylor has a history of baiting and switching in her work, where she presents albums or individual songs as one thing before subverting those expectations entirely when they are released.

Taylor’s Time comments about being locked away for years, the frustration that she expressed in past songs over her relationship keeping her from stardom, and the overwhelming difference in her public image since splitting from Joe, have led some fans to vilify him in accusations that he actively kept her from the spotlight against her will.

And while we don’t know the full story behind their breakup at this point, these new song titles have only escalated the Swiftie backlash against Joe.

“Joe was literally ruining Taylor, its clear he had taylor silenced,” one person claimed on Twitter. “‘but daddy i love him’ being an exact reference to the little mermaid because of ariel giving up her voice to be with the love of her life.”

“Is fresh out the slammer about joe imprisoning her and going out for her first pap walk in 80 years,” another asked. One more wrote, “she was locked away for so long to appease his wishes.”

“i’m literally so embarrassed that we rode for and rooted for joe in the way we did when he made her feel like this in the end………. like omfg………. we all trusted you……,” somebody else tweeted after the tracklist’s release.

In fact, throughout the course of their relationship, Taylor embarked on a six-month, 53-date global stadium tour, released five new albums and two rerecordings, and appeared in two movies: Cats and David O. Russell’s Amsterdam.

She also directed and released her All Too Well short film, received an honorary degree from New York University, and made multiple TV chat show appearances.

In addition, Taylor had another 34-date global tour, Lover Fest, scheduled for 2020, which was only canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. 

At the time, Taylor’s reputation was at its worst, with the star being branded a “snake” by critics and inundated with hateful comments. And over the years, Taylor’s music has suggested that it was the very fact that Joe didn’t care about her being Taylor Swift, superstar, that made her fall in love with him.

In her 2017 song “Delicate,” which is widely believed to be about the early days of their relationship, she sings, “My reputation’s never been worse, so you must like me for me.”

And in “…Ready for It,” Taylor seemingly admits that she finds Joe’s nonchalance toward her star status refreshing with the lyric, “Some boys are trying too hard, he don’t try at all though.”

Even her 2022 song “Lavender Haze” appears to reflect on how unfazed Joe was by her being at her lowest in 2016. In it she sings, “I’ve been under scrutiny / You handle it beautifully / All of this is new to me.”

“They’re bringing up my history / But you’re not even listening,” she later adds. 

And contrary to the recent narrative surrounding Taylor and Joe, that privacy and the low-key nature of their relationship was actually what made it so "sacred" to Taylor.

Speaking in her 2020 Netflix documentary, Miss Americana, Taylor said of her public downfall, “I was falling in love with someone who had a wonderfully normal, balanced life. We decided together we wanted our relationship to be private. I was happy. But I wasn’t happy in the way I was trained to be happy. It was happiness without anyone else’s input. We were just happy.”

And in a conversation with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone, Taylor reflected on “carving out a human life within a public life” as she acknowledged Joe’s “grounded” and “normal” way of living.

This is particularly evident in Taylor’s 2017 song “King of My Heart,” in which she finds joy in “drinking beer out of plastic cups” and realizes that she no longer has a need for “fancy stuff.”

And it is echoed in her song 2022 “Paris,” where she suggests that being with Joe helps her find luxury in things that are far from luxurious, like making believe that “cheap wine” is champagne, and that their everyday environment was actually the exhilarating city of love, Paris.

With Joe, Taylor enjoyed finding romance in the mundane intimacy of cleaning up after a party with the person you love, painting a wall for his younger brother together, and spending quality time with each other’s inner circle.

She swapped showbiz events for watching rugby in the pub with Joe’s friends, and several songs suggest that domesticity was a key factor in their relationship. In “Lover,” Taylor revels in affection being expressed through seemingly inconsequential situations like having friends stay over and making new traditions in their shared home.

This fear is at its most exposed in her 2020 song “Peace,” in which she warns that she will never be able to give anybody a peaceful life because of the publicity that surrounds her.

In the poignant track, Taylor also questions whether her devotion is enough when there is so much outside of her control.

Notably, she goes on to suggest that she is on the same page as Joe and equally willing to keep their love as private as possible, singing, “All these people think love's for show / But I would die for you in secret.”

It is also worth reiterating that we don’t actually know the reason behind Taylor and Joe’s split, and neither of them has explicitly mentioned it.

We’ll likely get some answers on April 19 about exactly what went down between the pair, but before the Swifties go too hard on Joe, it should be remembered that he was seemingly exactly who Taylor needed when she was at her lowest point in 2016.

And the fact that his approach to fame and his private life didn’t end up aligning with Taylor’s as the years progressed definitely isn’t something that he should be punished for.