Swifties worldwide felt a collective sense of heartbreak on Saturday (April 8), when reports emerged that Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn have split after six years of dating.
“The relationship had just run its course. It’s why [Alwyn] hasn’t been spotted at any shows,” a source reportedly told ET. Billboard has since reached out to representatives for Swift and Alwyn, but had not received a response. The couple has yet to publicly reveal the status of their relationship.
Swift began dating the actor, who has appeared in a number of films including 2018’s The Favourite and 2022’s Conversations With Friends, in 2016. They’ve stayed private about their relationship throughout the past six years, though they’ve mentioned each other in interviews.
Alwyn also worked with Swift on her albums under the pen name William Bowery, winning his first Grammy in 2021 as a co-producer of Swift’s album of the year winner, Folklore (along with Swift, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner).
On Evermore, Alwyn co-wrote “Champagne Problems,” The National-assisted “Coney Island” and “Evermore.” And on Swift’s most recent release, Midnights, he contributed to “Sweet Nothing.”
We’ve compiled a timeline of Swift and Alwyn’s relationship, which you can check out below. We also have a timeline of everything the former couple has said about each other, which you can find here.
After rumors began swirling that Swift met Alwyn at the 2016 Met Gala, and that the duo attended a Kings of Leon concert a month after the superstar’s split from Tom Hiddleston, the first public sighting of Swift and Alwyn in the same location came in November 2016.
Swift was joined by her mom and friends Este and Alana Haim at the Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk premiere, in which Alwyn plays the titular character.
The Sun published a report that the duo had been together for a few months.
“This isn’t a new couple alert or a secret relationship – the only people this has been a secret to is the media because all of us, Taylor and Joe’s closest friends and their families, were aware they have been together for several months and have known each other for a long time,” a source reportedly told the publication. “After her 1989 tour and all the attention Taylor received, she learned she had to be more protective of her personal life and she and Joe decided early on to keep their private life private.”
The couple was finally caught in public in June 2017, when they were seen sitting on a balcony in Nashville. A month lather, they were snapped leaving Swift’s NYC apartment (while trying very hard to be incognito).
Both Alwyn and Swift posted photos of themselves (solo) next to the same exact cactus, which the actor later admitted was unintentional. “I didn’t even think of that until I was in New York and someone else mentioned it,” he said, according to ET. “It wasn’t purposeful at all!”
“I’m aware people want to know about that side of things,” he said of their relationship. “I think we have been successfully very private, and that has now sunk in for people.”
“But I really prefer to talk about work,” he added.
Another subtle Instagram nod to their relationship came when Swift promoted The Favourite, in which Alwyn played Samuel Masham. She even tagged Alwyn in the caption.
The duo walked hand-in-hand, with Alwyn dressed in a sleek tuxedo and Swift in a pale blue Stella McCartney dress, as they headed out of the party.
In August 2019, Swift released her seventh studio album Lover, which she revealed during a YouTube Live is about relationships and her current “lover.” Fans then began noticing clues about the couple in songs like “London Boy,” “Cornelia Street,” “Paper Rings” and the album’s title track.
After Swift took the stage at Saturday Night Live, the couple were seen holding hands while heading to New York’s Zuma for the show’s after party.
Alwyn supported Swift at the premiere of Cats, in which she played Bombalurina.
While the duo didn’t walk the red carpet together at the 2020 Golden Globes, where Swift was nominated for best original song for her and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats track “Beautiful Ghosts,” the couple sat together inside the venue.
With COVID-19 spreading rapidly, Swift and Alwyn seemed to enjoy quarantining together, as Alwyn shared multiple photos of the singer’s cat Benjamin Button.
With the release of Folklore, fans noticed a mysterious William Bowery credited as a writer on both “Exile” and “Betty.”
Fans immediately began speculating that Bowery was Alwyn, as the couple had spent a lot of time in the Bowery neighborhood of New York City early in their relationship.
During a conversation with Paul McCartney for Rolling Stone, Swift shared that the Folklore track is “actually more rooted in my personal life. I know you have done a really excellent job of this in your personal life: carving out a human life within a public life, and how scary that can be when you do fall in love and you meet someone, especially if you’ve met someone who has a very grounded, normal way of living. I, oftentimes, in my anxieties, can control how I am as a person and how normal I act and rationalize things, but I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and what they do and if they follow our car and if they interrupt our lives. I can’t control if there’s going to be a fake weird headline about us in the news tomorrow.”
She added that while Alwyn “absolutely” understands her life, the relationship has changed her perspective on privacy. “Whether that’s deciding where to live, who to hang out with, when to not take a picture—the idea of privacy feels so strange to try to explain, but it’s really just trying to find bits of normalcy. That’s what that song ‘Peace’ is taking about. Like, would it be enough if I could never fully achieve the normalcy that we both crave?”
In Folklore: The Long Pond Sessions, Swift revealed that the identity of Bowery is none other than Alwyn, confirming fan speculation. “There’s been a lot of discussion about William Bowery and his identity because it’s not a real person,” she said in the Disney+ special. “William Bowery is Joe, as we know.”
Bowery is credited on the album’s “Champagne Problems,” “Coney Island” and “Evermore.”
Alwyn co-produced six songs on Folklore, which won album of the year at the 63rd annual Grammy Awards – “Exile,” “Betty,” “My Tears Ricochet,” “August,” “This Is Me Trying” and “Illicit Affairs.” In addition, he co-wrote “Exile” and “Betty” under the pseudonym William Bowery.
“Taylor was introducing Joe to many people around her,” a source told E! of CAA’s pre-Oscars party at the San Vicente Bungalows. “She looked smitten and proud to be there with him.”
Another source said the two “were very coupley and cute and seemed happy to be there together. Taylor and Joe were together all night. He was leading her around introducing her to people, and Taylor also introducing people to Joe. When Joe was leading Taylor around, he held his arm around her back.”
Rumors had been circulating for years that the duo planned to tie the knot, but Alwyn kept the topic private as usual. “If I had a pound for every time I think I’ve been told I’ve been engaged, then I’d have a lot of pound coins,” he told the Wall Street Journal. “I mean, the truth is, if the answer was yes, I wouldn’t say, and if the answer was no, I wouldn’t say.”
TMZ shared photos of the couple kissing while swimming in the ocean, and relaxing on sun beds during their sunny vacation.
Before releasing Midnights, Swift revealed to fans that “Lavender Haze” is inspired by her relationship with Alwyn. “I happened upon the phrase ‘Lavender Haze’ when I was watching Mad Men,” the musical artist explained in a post on Instagram. “I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it’s a common phrase used in the ’50s where they would describe being in love…If you were in the lavender haze, then that meant that you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful.”
She continued, “I guess theoretically, when you’re in the lavender haze, you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. I think a lot of people have to deal with this now, not just ‘public figures’, because we live in the era of social media. If the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody, they’re going to weigh in on it.”
When the music video for the song was released in February 2023, Swift snuck in one of her famous Easter Eggs on a “Mastermind” vinyl that appears in the clip. On the cover are Sagittarius and Pisces constellations, which are Swift and Alwyn’s zodiac signs, respectively.
According to ET, a source said the breakup was amicable and “was not dramatic.”
“The relationship had just run its course. It’s why [Alwyn] hasn’t been spotted at any shows,” the source reportedly noted. Swift and Alwyn have yet to publicly confirm or deny the split.