In case you missed it, yesterday was a lot in Taylor Swift Land, with a whole load of revelations about her relationship with her ex Joe Alwyn coming to light.
Taylor and Joe’s split was announced in April after six and a half years together, and neither of them have ever publicly spoken about it.
However, in May, Taylor released a brand new song called “You’re Losing Me,” which appeared to shed some new light on what had happened between them.
The heartbreaking track is told from the point of view of somebody who is desperate for their partner to fight for their relationship, only to be left feeling like an “imposition.”
The song literally starts with Taylor sighing deeply into the microphone, before saying that she’s wondering “if it’s time” to “throw out everything” they’d built together. She adds: “My heart won’t start anymore for you / ‘cause you’re losing me.”
Taylor goes on to sing that she is “dying” in the relationship, and later defeatedly admits: “I wouldn’t marry me either.” She then begs her partner: “Do something, babe, say something / lose something, babe, risk something / choose something, babe, I’ve got nothing to believe unless you’re choosing me.”
When it was released, fans immediately put two and two together and assumed that it was about the demise of Taylor and Joe’s romance, and had only recently been written and recorded. Especially as Taylor had been spotted going in and out of a New York City recording studio in the weeks prior to its release.
However, on Wednesday, Taylor’s longtime collaborator and friend Jack Antonoff dropped a huge curveball as he revealed that “You’re Losing Me” was actually written and recorded long before Taylor and Joe officially ended things.
Sharing a candid picture of Taylor dressed down and eating raisins from a kitchen counter, Jack addressed the fact that the song was finally available to stream on Spotify by writing: “you’re losing me is out today. a very special track from midnights sessions that’s finally streaming! written and recorded at home on 12/5/21 right after taylor ate these raisins.”
And it wasn’t lost on Swifties that this means that Taylor wrote the devastating lyrics almost 18 months before her and Joe’s split. It’s worth mentioning that she and Joe were spotted together throughout 2022, so it definitely isn’t the case that the breakup was simply kept a secret for that length of time.
Amid the fan reaction to this bombshell on social media, many questioned how Taylor could have written her love song “Sweet Nothing,” which was released in October last year, so soon after writing such a devastating heartbreak song presumably about the same person.
“Sweet Nothing” is one of the only love songs on Taylor’s Midnights album, and includes the lyric: “On the way home I wrote a poem / you say ‘what a mind’ / this happens all the time,” which many believed to be a recollection of an actual exchange that Taylor had had with her then-boyfriend.
However, as the discourse about “You’re Losing Me” grew on social media, eagle-eyed Swifties noticed that Taylor had recently liked a tweet that debunks the theory that this song was ever about Joe.
The tweet was a Paul McCartney quote about his wife Linda McCartney, and reads: “i would come back from a run with a poem to share and having listened linda would say ‘what a mind’ though the lines may not have been supreme, she wasn’t merely being kind. she meant what she said. it’s going to make a man feel good, that kind of a thing.”
Interestingly, this tweet was posted more than a year ago, soon after Midnights’s initial release, leaving little question over Taylor’s intention behind her social media activity, with many fans interpreting it to be her way of letting them know that “Sweet Nothing” was actually inspired by Paul and Linda’s relationship.
Needless to say, all of this was a hot topic of conversation for pop culture lovers everywhere, and one of the places that it was being discussed was on celebrity gossip Instagram page Deux Moi, which has over two million followers.
The person behind this account is anonymous and often shares unconfirmed industry gossip. They also post follower submissions with unverified information about celebrities, some of which does end up being confirmed as true.
For years, Deux has repeatedly claimed on their Instagram account and associated podcast that Taylor and Joe had secretly got married, and they even doubled down on this rumor after the split was announced. However, by this point they’d clarified that it may not have been a legal marriage, but a “ceremony” of sorts in Joe’s home country of England.
But amid all of the revelations on Thursday, Deux shared their belief that Taylor and Joe actually took a break at some point before their final split.
This prompted a follower to write in to point out: “Just because Taylor wrote a sad song about Joe in Dec 21 doesn’t mean they broke up around that time OR that she was unhappy for all of 2022/23. Anyone who has been in a long term relationship will tell you there are highs and lows.”
They then added in their submission: “Even YOU, Deuxmoi, is now trying to claim you thought they were on a break in 2023 when you were maintaining they were secretly married up until and after they broke up!!”
But Deux stood by their claim, writing in response: “She DID have a ceremony in either 2020 or 2021 in the UK and it was described to me as a ‘marriage’ by more than one person. It was NEVER made legal.”
“I will die on this hill!” they added. “Put it on my tombstone! I have no reason to lie, I could give a shit what she does!!!!! I’m sorry she didn’t tell you guys about it in a song but just because she doesn’t sing about something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen!!!”
And this post proved to be the final straw for Taylor’s publicist, Tree Paine, who tweeted for the first time in over a year especially to debunk Deux’s claims.
While Tree often retweets posts about Taylor, her last tweet herself was a link to Taylor’s “Anti-Hero” music video in October 2022.
Sharing a screenshot of the Deux Moi post, Tree wrote: “Enough is enough with these fabricated lies about Taylor from Deuxmoi. There was NEVER a marriage or ceremony of ANY kind. This is an insane thing to post. It’s time for you to be held accountable for the pain and trauma you cause with posts like these.”
But Deux refused to back down, and shared Tree’s tweet to her Instagram Story alongside the caption: “’pain and trauma’ … are very strong words. I understand why they’d be bothered, but Tree (and Taylor) are livid. Of all things, why are they so angry about this particular claim that they felt the need to respond?”
They also wrote: “Well I make zero dollars from lying… can publicists say the same. Also, to relate something that is in reference to something that happened years ago to ‘pain & trauma’ after what just happened seems like a poor choice of words. Either way, I apologize to Taylor.”
While many were confused by the allusion to “what just happened,” some took it to be a reference to the tragic death of one of Taylor’s fans at her concert in Brazil earlier this month.
Reddit / Via reddit.com
Ana Clara Benevides Machado was just 23 years old when she suffered a cardiac arrest amid extreme temperatures at Taylor’s Eras tour and later died in hospital.
Tree has not responded further, and Taylor has not publicly acknowledged the situation.
