Taylor Swift’s memories of making “Folklore” might have shed new light on her breakup with British actor Joe Alwyn.
During her Saturday show in Melbourne, Australia, the pop star told fans how isolated she felt while writing the 2020 album, which was released during the first summer of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a video shared on X, formerly Twitter, Swift briefly discussed writing “Folklore” before going into one of the album’s tracks, “Betty.” She said she spent her songwriting time “imagining that, instead of being a lonely millennial woman covered in cat hair drinking my weight in white wine, I instead was a ghostly Victorian lady wandering through the woods with a candle in a candlestick holder.”
“And I wrote only on parchment with a feathered quill,” she went on. “And that was, in my mind, what I thought I looked like, writing ‘Folklore.’”
“That was not what I looked like while writing ‘Folklore,’” Swift added. “But it was what I thought I was like, so that’s all that matters. You know, it’s the delusion.”
The star recorded her dreamy, indie rock-influenced album during the early parts of the pandemic, when she was quarantining with Alwyn, her boyfriend at the time, in London.
Things seemed to be going strong between the two, who reportedly began dating in 2016.
The duo even managed to collaborate on music, with Alwyn credited as a co-writer on a couple “Folklore” songs under the pseudonym William Bowery.
Despite the creative connection, the relationship was not meant to last.
Swift and Alwyn’s breakup became public last spring; the singer’s forthcoming album, “The Tortured Poets Department,” is expected to explore their split.