Were signs of the impending breakup between Taylor Swift and longtime boyfriend Joe Alwyn
staring us in the face for months? Some fans think so, and they're bringing the receipts.
As with most of her previous albums, Taylor Swift's chart-topping 2022 album "Midnights"
contained several musical love letters to her long-term boyfriend Joe Alwyn,
some of which he had a hand in himself. See the ode to domestic bliss "Sweet Nothing" for proof.
But the "3 a.m." edition of the singer's 10th LP would suggest that things weren't always
so rosy at home. The ominously-titled "The Great War" has numerous potential meanings.
As Cosmopolitan notes, it could be about one of the pair's most heated arguments.
It includes lyrics in which Taylor says that she "called off the troops" and adds,
"I really thought I lost you."
Later in the song, Swift seems to claim that her significant
other was the driving force behind their ceasefire before recalling how she vowed
to remain with him forever. Of course, within six months of the song's release,
Swift and Alwyn would find themselves both waving the white flag on the relationship.
"We just really love sad songs, what can I say?"
Swift is renowned for leaving breadcrumbs about the state of
her love life in her music. But in March 2023, she also appeared to drop a major
hint about her relationship with Alwyn with a significant change to her Eras Tour setlist.
For its first four dates, Swift had performed "Invisible String," a love song grounded in
optimism. However, for the fifth show, the singer replaced the track with another "Folklore" number
— "The 1" — which instead discusses a former love. The lyrics include the regretful lines,
"And if my wishes came true, It would've been you."
With the power of hindsight, Swifties interpreted
this substitution as a clear sign that all had not been well between Swift and Alwyn,
and took to social media to point it out. Culture writer Hunter Harris tweeted,
"snipping that invisible string."
To punctuate her commentary, she added a GIF of the "Cutting The Thread" scene from "Hercules."
"Champagne Problems" was a track on Swift's 2020 album "Evermore," co-written by William Bowery,
the songwriting alter ego of then-boyfriend Joe Alwyn.
"It sounds like a kind of Agatha Christie
character who should be wearing a monocle with a big mustache."
Depicting a woman with mental health struggles who turns down her boyfriend's proposal around
the holidays, the sad love song was said to be a work of pure fiction. But
it undoubtedly takes on a new meaning in the wake of the couple's real-life split.
Swift's emotional rendition of the track during the early stages of her Eras Tour
left some fans wondering whether this was a sign that their romance had turned sour. A
fan video posted to TikTok shows the singer getting tearful while performing the number
on the piano. Alongside an emojis of a broken heart and a tearful face,
one fan commented following the confirmation of the breakup,
"Now this hits different."
Perhaps the song's theme is closer to home than the singer previously cared to admit.
Following the news of Swift and Alwyn going their separate ways,
some observant fans put forward the theory that the singer had placed a very specific
Easter egg in the music video for her song "Lavender Haze." It's definitely
something of a stretch, but there is at least a method to their madness.
At one point in the video, Swift is seen dropping a match. This has been construed
as a sign that something in her life is about to blow up. Fans have specifically
noted the timecode of the moment where the match drop occurs, 48 seconds. On April 8th,
or 4/8 for people who live in the United States, the news about Swift's split from
Alwyn was officially confirmed. One of the fans who made the connection wrote on Twitter,
"she burnt it all on 4/8. she gave us an easter egg for the date of her own breakup."
Of course, that would be some impressive foreshadowing considering the video was
released in January 2023, months before word about the split got out. According to a source
who spoke to CNN, Swift and Alwyn broke up a few weeks prior to the news being confirmed,
so they were presumably still together when the "Lavender Haze" video was made and released.
Swift and Alwyn were never the kind of couple to showcase their love in public.
Good luck trying to find a joint interview or a picture of them together on the red carpet.
"Swift and Alwyn had always kept their relationship invisibly private."
Even so, the fact that they hadn't been spotted with each other for nearly six months should
have set the alarm bells ringing before the news of their split broke in April 2023.
You'd have to go back to October 2022, when the couple was shopping for furniture in New York
City, for the last time they were publicly snapped alongside each other. Alwyn was evidently absent
from the opening dates of Swift's Eras Tour, too. The latter development got plenty of tongues
wagging, but an insider told People that things were still hunky-dory between the pair, saying,
"Joe will travel with her when he can. They are
great together. Joe is super supportive of her career."
A few days after reports of the couple's split, Swift went out to dinner in New York
City with actor Margaret Qualley and one of her key musical collaborators,
Jack Antonoff. Her close friends are the only ones who might know what really happened as of now, but
it's likely elements of Swift and Alwyn's parting will play into future tracks from the singer.