Taylor Swift’s New Album Title Appears To Be A Pretty Obvious Reference To Her Ex Joe Alwyn, And People Are Divided

Last April, pop culture lovers everywhere were left shocked when it was announced that Taylor Swift had split from her boyfriend Joe Alwyn after more than six and a half incredibly private years together.

While neither Taylor or Joe ever discussed their relationship in the media, and were rarely even pictured together, Taylor did not hide the fact that he was her muse, and gave fans an intimate insight into their relationship through her music.

The apparent reckoning started in May, when Taylor appeared to shed some light on what had happened between her and Joe by releasing a new song called “You’re Losing Me.”

However, in November Joe was back in the headlines after Taylor’s longtime friend and collaborator Jack Antonoff randomly revealed that “You’re Losing Me” had actually been written and recorded long before Taylor and Joe’s split.

The following day, Taylor’s publicist, Tree Paine, added to the whirlwind when she issued an angry tweet denying speculation that Taylor and Joe were secretly married before their split.

When asked about the seriously public way that her romance with Travis had unfolded, Taylor said: “When you say a relationship is public, that means I’m going to see him do what he loves, we’re showing up for each other, other people are there and we don’t care.”

Her fans immediately caught on to her apparent changing of the narrative and discussed it on X, formerly known as Twitter, at the time. One person tweeted: “love the track-by-track j0e erasure. first sweet nothing now this.”

As she accepted the award for Best Pop Vocal Album at the ceremony, Taylor said: “I want to say thank you to the fans by telling you a secret that I have been keeping from you for the last two years, which is that my brand-new album comes out April 19th. It’s called The Tortured Poets Department.”

And this theory was all-but-confirmed when people remembered an interview that Joe had done with Irish actor Paul Mescal, where it was revealed that they and Andrew Scott have a WhatsApp group chat that just might have been the inspiration behind Taylor’s upcoming album’s name.

Joe Alwyn and Paul Mescal have a WhatsApp group with Andrew Scott called “The Tortured Man Club.”

“It hasn’t had much use recently,” Alwyn says.
“I feel like we’re less tortured now,” Mescal quips. https://t.co/CSai4ScQpz pic.twitter.com/veCp1ZdFsD

— Variety (@Variety) December 15, 2022