Is Taylor Swift's New Album ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ About Joe Alwyn?
19 April 2024, 11:45 | Updated: 24 April 2024, 12:00
Why everyone is convinced Taylor Swift’s new album 'The Tortured Poets Department’ is about ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn as the track list seems to suggest.
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Taylor Swift dropped the track list for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ just 24 hours after announcing her new album at the Grammys, revealing song titles like 'imgonnagetyouback', ‘So Long, London’, ‘loml’ and 'Fortnight'. This was before we discovered there was a whole extra track list, 15 surprise songs like ‘thanK you aIMee' and 'The Black Dog' which featured on 'The Anthology' version that came out at 2am on 19th April.
The track list and many of the lyrics have Swifties convinced ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ is heavily influenced by Taylor’s six-year relationship and split from Joe Alwyn, who she broke up with at the start of 2023 right before heading on The Eras Tour.
- Read more: All The Times Taylor Swift Wrote Songs And Lyrics About Boyfriend Joe Alwyn
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Taylor may be happily loved up with new boyfriend Travis Kelce, but she’s been working on her 11th studio album for two years, meaning she would have still been with Joe when she began writing the new songs.
Here's why fans are convinced the new album is all about her ex.
Is ‘Tortured Poets Department’ about Joe Alwyn?
Taylor will never confirm if a whole album is about an ex-boyfriend, but she’s made it no secret that it’s her love life that inspires her music, having written songs about exes Jake Gyllenhaal, Harry Styles and Calvin Harris too.
‘The Tortured Poets Department’ seems to be heavily influenced by her relationship with Joe, just from looking at the track list.
‘So Long, London’ is a pretty strong hint that album TTPD is about Taylor’s London-born ex Joe, as Taylor’s 2019 song ‘London Boy’ from her album ‘Lover’ is all about how they’d spend their days in Camden Market, Highgate, Brixton and Shoreditch.
The chorus was filled with references of the capital and now ‘So Long, London’ is all about leaving the city after spending so long there with Joe.
'So Long, London' includes lyrics like: 'I’m just mad as hell cause I loved this place' in reference to the fact that she's lost London the city, which we all knew she loved, as well as her relationship.
However, in December it was reported she spent £10 million on a new home in North London so it doesn’t look like it’s goodbye for long!
Taylor apparently picked the London mansion to be her base in Europe while she tours on this side of the globe in the coming months.
A few of the songs on the track list for ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ also seems to hint at the tougher times in their relationship like 'The Manuscript', ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can)’ and ‘I Can Do It With A Broken Heart’.
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The name of the album itself could even be a direct link to Joe, who revealed in 2022 he was in a group chat called The Tortured Man Club with Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott. Joe’s pal Paul has a direct link to Tay in that he dated Taylor’s close friend Phoebe Bridges for two years.
Speaking to Variety, they revealed Andrew "started the group", with Paul saying: "He's just on it every day. He's just on it by himself."
Joe jokingly added: "Just messaging himself good mornings."
Taylor and Joe broke up at the start of 2023, although it wasn’t actually made public until April that year.
Throughout their relationship and even after their breakup Taylor put her feelings into their music, as is her trademark, and has a back catalogue of songs about Joe.
These include ‘Invisible Sting’, ‘The 1’, ‘Peace’, ‘Delicate’, ‘Gorgeous’, ‘Lover’ and ‘The Archer’ to name a few.
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