It wasn’t made of wildest dreams.
On Taylor Swift’s newly released album “The Tortured Poets Department,” which dropped on Friday, the pop star, 34, seemingly admits that she was more emotionally wounded from her breakup with her ex, British actor Joe Alwyn, than it seemed at the time.
In her song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart,” (which is the thirteenth track on the album) Swift says that she was only pretending to be happy following their split, which took place ahead of her Eras Tour.
Her lyrics supposedly about the “Conversations With Friends” star say, “Cause I’m a real tough kid, I can handle my s—t / They said, ‘Baby, gotta fake it till you make it,’ and I did / Lights, camera, b–ch, smile, even when you wanna die / He said he’d love me all his life.”
Swift, who has since moved on to NFL player Travis Kelce, 34, also says in the song that she was “Shattered” while crowds chanted “more” from her.
Swift dated Alwyn, 33, for six years, from 2016 to 2023.
Their relationship was more low-key and private than her relationship with other past famous exes, such as Tom Hiddleston, 43.
Neither has publicly spoken much about the other, but this song appears to offer a peek behind the curtains.
And, it is a sharp contrast to a statement that Swift made in May of 2023. During an Eras tour stop in Mass., she told the crowd, “I’ve just never been this happy in my life — in all aspects of my life — ever before. And I just want to thank you for being a part of that. I don’t know. It’s not just the tour. My life finally feels like it makes sense.”
This isn’t the only track where Swift talks about Alwyn.
Another song called “So Long, London” is goodbye to the city where the pop star once lived with the actor.
To demonstrate how deep those Swift Easter eggs can be hidden, that track is 9 minutes and 28 seconds — which happens to line up with when the exes are rumored to have started dating on Sept. 28, 2016.
Alwyn is also rumored to figure in the album title, which seemingly puts a snarky spin on the name of a group chat, “The Tortured Man Club,” that he had with his fellow actors Paul Mescal and Andrew Scott.
Alwyn and Mescal, 28, opened up about their group chat during a 2022 interview with Variety. It was founded by Scott, 47.
“[Scott is] just on it every day. He’s just on it by himself,” Mescal told the outlet, with Alwyn joking that the “Fleabag” actor is “just messaging himself good mornings.”
In an interview with GQ UK, Alwyn added that the chat name was “a reflection on Connell and Nick.” Alwyn played the character Nick on “Conversations With Friends,” while Mescal played Connell on “Normal People.” Both TV series were adaptations from books written by Irish author Sally Rooney.
Further lyrics by Swift say, “I was grinning like I’m winning, I was hitting my marks, cause I can do it with a broken heart / I’m so depressed I act like it’s my birthday every day,” Swift sings. “I’m so obsessed with him but he avoids me like the plague / I cry a lot but I am so productive, it’s an art.”