Never walking Cornelia Street again. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn were together for nearly six years before their split — and the singer provided glimpses into their love story through her music.
The Grammy winner and England native were first linked in May 2017 after meeting at the Met Gala the year prior. While the twosome were immensely private about their romance — and ultimately called it quits in April 2023 — Swift often shared details about their relationship through song, even cowriting a few tracks with her beau for her albums Folklore, Evermore and Midnights.
“Joe and I really love sad songs. We’ve always bonded over music. … We write the saddest. We just really love sad songs. What can I say?” Swift told Zane Lowe on his Apple Music show in December 2022. “And I say it was a surprise that we started writing together, but in a way, it wasn’t because we have always bonded over music and had the same musical tastes. And he’s always the person who’s showing me songs by artists and then they become my favorite songs.”
When Swift won Album of the Year at the 2021 Grammy’s for Folklore, the Conversations With Friends actor was one of the people she thanked. “[Joe], he is the first person who I play every new song I write,” Swift gushed during her acceptance speech. “And I had the best time writing songs with you in quarantine.”
While Alwyn was credited under the pseudonym William Bowrey on songs including “Champagne Problems,” “Exile” and “Betty” — which are all tracks about breakups — some of Swift’s most epic love ballads came from her relationship with the Mary Queen of Scots actor.
In songs including “King of My Heart” off of 2017’s Reputation, Swift croons about finding The One who will put an “end to all the endings.” On 2019’s Lover — a record largely dedicated to her romance with Alwyn — she sings about marrying her beau with “paper rings.”
The Fearless artist is also known for her motifs, with many songs mentioning the color blue — the same shade as Alwyn’s eyes and his self-admitted favorite color — and golden, which Swift often uses when referencing love.
During a November 2020 interview with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone, the Beatles legend asked Swift about the lyrics in “Peace” — a song off her 2020 album Folklore — in which she sings, “I want to give you a child.”
The Cats star explained the track is “rooted in [her] personal life” (the majority of inspiration for the record were taken from books and film), adding, “Caring out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you met someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living.”
Keep scrolling for a list of every Swift track inspired by Alwyn:
“End Game”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: “I hit you like bang / We tried to forget it, but we just couldn’t / And I bury hatchets but I keep maps of where I put ’em / Reputation precedes me, they told you I’m crazy / I swear I don’t love the drama, it loves me. And I can’t let you go, your handprint’s on my soul / It’s like your eyes are liquor, it’s like your body is gold.”
“Delicate”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: “This ain’t for the best / My reputation’s never been worse so/ You must like me for me.”
“Dancing With Our Hands Tied”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: “I loved you in secret / First sight, yeah, we love without reason / Oh, twenty-five years old / Oh, how were you to know / My, my love had been frozen / Deep blue, but you painted me golden.”
“King of My Heart”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: “Is this the end of all the endings? / My broken bones are mending / With all these nights we’re spending / Up on the roof with a school girl crush / Say you fancy me not fancy stuff / Baby all at once this is enough.”
“Gorgeous”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: “I have a boyfriend he’s older than us / He’s in the club doing I don’t know what / You’re so cool it makes me hate you so much / You’re so gorgeous / I can’t say anything to your face / ‘Cause look at your face.”
“Dress”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyrics: “Our secret moments in your crowded room / They got no idea about me and you /There is an indentation in the shape of you / Made your mark on me, a golden tattoo.”
“Call it What You Want”
Album: Reputation
Standout Lyric: I want to wear his initial on a chain ’round my neck, chain ’round my neck / Not because he owns me / But ’cause he really knows me / Which is more than they can say / I recall late November / Holdin’ my breath, slowly I said / ‘You don’t need to save me, but would you run away with me?’ / ‘Yes.’”
“Cruel Summer”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “It’s new, the shape of your body / It’s blue, the feeling I’ve got / And It’s a cruel summer / It’s cool, that’s what I tell ’em / No rules, in breakable heaven / But It’s a cruel summer with you.”
“Lover”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? / With every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover / My heart’s been borrowed and yours has been blue / All’s well that ends well to end up with you.”
“Paper Rings”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “In the winter, in the icy outdoor pool / When you jumped in first, I went in too / I’m with you even if it makes me blue / Which takes me back / To the color that we painted your brother’s wall / Honey, without all the exes, fights, and flaws / We wouldn’t be standing here so tall.”
“I Think He Knows”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “He got that boyish look that I like in a man / I am an architect, I’m drawing up the plans / It’s like I’m seventeen, nobody understands / No one understands.”
“London Boy”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “And now I love high tea, stories from uni, and the West End / You can find me in the pub, we are watching rugby with his school friends / Show me a gray sky, a rainy cab ride / Babe, don’t threaten me with a good time / They say home is where the heart is / But God, I love the English.”
“Afterglow”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “Tell me that you’re still mine / Tell me that we’ll be just fine / Even when I lose my mind / I need to say / Tell me that it’s not my fault / Tell me that I’m all you want / Even when I break your heart.”
“Daylight”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “Luck of the draw only draws the unlucky / And so I became the butt of the joke / I wounded the good and I trusted the wicked / Clearing the air, I breathed in the smoke / Maybe you ran with the wolves and refused to settle down / Maybe I’ve stormed out of every single room in this town / Threw out our cloaks and our daggers because it’s morning now / It’s brighter now.”
“Cornelia Street”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “Baby, I get mystified by how this city screams your name / And baby, I’m so terrified of if you ever walk away / I’d never walk Cornelia Street again / You hold my hand on the street / Walk me back to that apartment / Years ago, we were just inside / Barefoot in the kitchen / Sacred new beginnings / That became my religion / I hope I never lose you.”
“False God”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “And I can’t talk to you when you’re like this / Staring out the window like I’m not your favorite town / I’m New York City / I still do it for you, babe / They all warned us about times like this / They say the road gets hard and you get lost when you’re led by blind faith / But we might just get away with it. Religion’s in your lips / Even if it’s a false god.”
“All the Girls You’ve Loved Before”
Album: Lover
Standout Lyric: “Every dead-end street / Led you straight to me / Now you’re all I need / I’m so thankful for / All of the girls you loved before / But I love you more.”
‘Long Story Short”
Album: Folklore
Standout Lyric: “Past me /I wanna tell you not to get lost in these petty things / Your nemeses / Will defeat themselves before you get the chance to swing / And he’s passing by / Rare as the glimmer of a comet in the sky / And he feels like home / If the shoe fits, walk in it everywhere you go.”
“Invisible String”
Album: Folklore
Standout Lyric: “Bad was the blood of the song in the cab / On your first trip to L.A. / You ate at my favorite spot for dinner / Bold was the waitress on our three year trip. Getting lunch down by the lakes / She said I looked like an American singer / Time, mystical time / Cuttin’ me open, then healin’ me fine / Were there clues I didn’t see? And isn’t it just so pretty to think / All along there was some invisible string tying you to me?”
“The Lakes”
Album: Folklore
Standout Lyric: “Take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die / I don’t belong, and my beloved, neither do you / Those Windermere peaks look like a perfect place to cry / I’m setting off, but not without my muse.”
“Peace”
Album: Folklore
Standout Lyric: “But I’m a fire, and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm / If your cascade ocean wave blues come / All these people think love’s for show / But I would die for you in secret / The devil’s in the details, but you got a friend in me / Would it be enough if I could never give you peace?”
“Lavender Haze”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “All they keep askin’ me / Is if I’m gonna be your bride / The only kind of girl they see / Is a one-night or a wife / I find it dizzying / They’re bringing up my history / But you aren’t even listening.”
“Snow on the Beach”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “One night, a few moons ago / I saw flecks of what could’ve been lights / But it might just have been you / Passing by unbeknownst to me / Life is emotionally abusive / And time can’t stop me quite like you did.”
“Sweet Nothing”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “They said the end is coming / Everyone’s up to something / I find myself running home to your sweet nothings / Outside, they’re push and shoving / You’re in the kitchen humming / All that you ever wanted from me was sweet nothing.”
“Mastermind”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “What if I told you none of it was accidental / And the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me? / I laid the groundwork and then, just like clockwork / The dominoes cascaded in a line / What if I told you I’m a mastermind? / And now you’re mine / It was all by design / ‘Cause I’m a mastermind.”
“Paris”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “Privacy sign on the door / And on my page and on the whole world / Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours / Levitate above all the messes made / Sit quiet by my side in the shade / And not the kind that’s thrown / I mean, the kind under where a tree has grown.”
“The Great War”
Album: Midnights
Standout Lyric: “It turned into something bigger / Somewhere in the haze, got a sense I’d been betrayed / Your finger on my hair pin triggers / Soldier down on that icy ground / Looked up at me with honor and truth / Broken and blue, so I called off the troops / That was the night I nearly lost you.”
